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.BY 


THE   NEWER   RELIGIOUS   THINKING. 


The  words  that  I  have  spoken  tmto  you  are  sph'it, 
and  are  life. 

I  came  that  they  7nay  have  life,  and  may  have  it 
abundantly. 

The  Lord  Jesus. 


THE    NEWER 


iV 


RELIGIOUS   THINKING 


\/ 


/  tU  Ct  A^lv 


BY 

DAVID   NELSON    BEACH. 


BOSTON: 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND    COMPANY. 

1893- 


Copyright,  1S93, 
By  David  Nelson  Beach. 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


TO    THE    MEMORY 

OF 

PRESTON     SHELDON,    M.D. 

1854-1891. 


'Perplext  in  faith,  but  pure  in  deeds, 
At  last  he  beat  his  music  out" 


Old  things  are  passed  away. 
All  things  are  beco?ne  fiew. 

All  things  are  of  God. 

Saint  Paul. 


PREFACE 


T^HE  newer  religious  thinking  here  spoken 
of  is  not  mine,  nor  any  other  man's,  nor 
that  of  any  institution,  or  school,  or  division 
of  Christendom.  It  is  a  world  movement. 
It  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  world  move- 
ments older  than  Abraham.  I  have  not 
attempted  to  define  it  except  in  the  most 
general  way,  nor  to  compass  it,  but  only  to 
speak  sympathetically  and  suggestively  of  it. 

I  have  not  spoken  technically,  but  in  plain 
language.  This  is  not  a  monograph.  It 
is  not  specialist  work.  It  is  a  talk  about 
matters  in  everybody's  thought.  If  I  should 
characterize  it  at  all,  I  should  call  it  an  inter- 
pretation, a  trying  to  put  new  things  and 
feared  things  —  "they  feared  as  they  entered 
into  the  cloud  "  —  in  their  simple  and  divine 
lio-ht. 


8  Preface. 

Such  touching  evidences  of  its  oral  help- 
fuhiess  have  reached  me  that  I  commit  it 
to  type.  In  so  far  as  God's  mind  is  in  it, 
may  it  reach  men's  minds.  For  there  is  sore 
need  of  h'ght.  And  there  is  need  that  the 
Heht  have  in  it  warmth  and  vision.  If  even 
a  httle  of  this  is  here,  may  it  gladden  eyes 
and  stir  hearts. 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
April  29,  1893. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

I.  This  Thinking  Characterized 13 

II.  Its  Hunger  after  God 39 

III.  Its  Passion  for  Men 71 

IV.  Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life     .  loi 
V.  Its  Idea  of  the  Bible 131 

VI.  Christ  its  Centre 161 


APPENDICES. 

A.  One  Type  of  Nature  Teaching      .     .     .     .  189 

B.  Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  VI 199 

C.  Some  Plain  Questioning 213 

List  of  Principal  Notes 229 


God  is  love. 

In  him  is  no  darkness  at  all. 

It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be. 

We  shall  be  like  him. 

Saint  John. 


THIS    THINKING    CHARACTERIZED. 


SYNOPSIS. 

Men  are  under  a  divine  impulse.  —  It  is  from  without,  and 
yet  from  within.  —  This  is  what  rehgion  is.  —  Being  thus  life, 
it  is  ever  renewing  itself.  —  There  always  has  been  a  newer 
religious  thinking:  In  the  Old  Testament;  In  the  New; 
Throughout  the  Christian  ages  ;  Now  (examples).  —  This 
implies  no  instability  in  the  facts  of  religion,  but  only  an 
ever-enlarging  apprehension  of  them.  —  The  latter  is  ground 
for  unspeakable  joy.  —  Interesting  fields  of  study  opened  by 
this  fact.  —  What  business  have  we  to  go  heresy-hunting  ?  — 
Certain  indications  of  newer  religious  thinking  at  the  present 
time:  (i)  Among  men  of  unfaith ;  (2)  Among  "  Une  van- 
gehcals;"  (3)  In  the  Church  of  Rome;  (4)  Among  "  Evan- 
gelicals."—  Certain  characteristics  of  this  thinking:  (i)  Its 
scientific  temper;  (2)  Its  practical  bent;  (3)  Its  purpose  to 
include  in  its  concept  the  entire  religious  impulse  of  the 
world;  (4)  Its  obedience  unto  the  heavenly  vision.  —  Some- 
thing of  eternity  already  shines  in  its  face. 


THE 

NEWER    RELIGIOUS    THINKING 


I. 

THIS   THINKING   CHARACTERIZED.^ 

Wherefore^  O  king  Agrippa,  I  was  not  disobedient  unto 
the  heavenly  vision.  —  Acts  xxvi.  19. 

A  DIVINE  compulsion  is  here  acknowl- 
"^^  edged.  It  becomes  the  law  of  a  great, 
aspiring,  epoch-affecting  life.  And  the  com- 
pulsion, the  law,  are  of  the  sort  which  alone 
can  be  most  potent  over  human  life.  They 
spring  from  vision,  from  an  illumination  of 
the  inner  nature.  They  are  thus  a  part  of 
the  man.  They  are  from  without  him,  and 
yet  from  within  him.     They  demand  great 

1  Preached  at  Prospect  Street  Church,  Cambridge,  Mas- 
sachusetts, Sunday  night,  October  30,  1892.  Somewhat 
amended  here,  but  the  spoken  fo?'m  retained.  So  of  the 
later  discourses. 


14  The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

thoughts,  feelings,  revisions,  renovations. 
Slowly,  perhaps  reluctantly,  they  command 
his  assent.  But  being  of  him  as  well  as 
from  beyond  him,  they  move  and  transform 
him.  They  are  life.  In  the  obeying  of 
•  them  there  is  life.  The  living  spirit  cannot 
be  disobedient  to  them. 

This  is  what  religion  is.  It  is  a  some- 
thing from  outside,  and  yet  from  inside.  It 
is  the  life  of  a  man,  of  men,  of  peoples,  of 
epochs  ;  a  part  of  them,  and  yet  not  of  them 
so  much  as  a  reciprocity  between  them  and 
their  correlative  in  the  nature  of  things,  in 
the  heart  of  the  world,  —  in,  for  short,  God. 
Being  thus  life,  it  is  always  renewing  itself. 
It  is  ever  young.  There  is  always  a  newer 
religious  thinking. 

There  always  has  been  such  thinking  in 
the  past.  Noah  is  farther  on  than  Enoch  ; 
Israel  than  Abraham ;  the  Moses  of  Deu- 
teronomy than  the  Moses  of  Exodus  ;  Sam- 
uel than  Joshua;  David  than  Samuel,  wdth 
that  great  discovery  of  his,  "  Thou  desirest 
not  sacrifice,"  and  with  that  new  face  on 
nature,  life,  and  reli<^ion,  which  ever  in  him 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  1 5 


appears.  Isaiah  is  farther  on,  too,  than 
EHjah  ;  and  the  late  Isaiah  than  the  earher. 
The  Christ  of  the  Per^an  ministry  is  an  ad- 
vance over  the  Christ  of  the  Gahlean  min- 
istry.^ Saint  Peter  at  Caesarea,  ten  years  after 
Pentecost,  confesses  that  God  has  made  clear 
to  him  a  truth  until  then  unperceived,  —  a 
truth  around  the  question  of  the  correctness 
of  which  the  apostolic  history  thenceforth 
turns.  The  Saint  Paul  of  First  and  Second 
Timothy  is  farther  on,  not  only  by  a  decade, 
but    in    his    intellectual    outlook,    than    the 

1  Whether  or  not  the  Evangehsts  indicate  an  advance  in 
the  thinking  of  the  Saviour  during  his  public  ministry,  cor- 
responding with  his  advance  in  method,  is  a  question  of 
interpretation ;  and  since  their  testimony  is  indirect,  the 
interpretation  will  be  colored  by  one's  insight  and  concep- 
tion of  developing  character.  It  will  also  be  colored,  per- 
haps, by  one's  view  of  the  person  of  Christ.  My  own  view 
of  his  person  is  very  high.  Nevertheless,  as  his  method  ad- 
vanced, so,  it  seems  to  me,  did  his  mental  outlook.  Neither 
am  I  able  to  see  why  its  earlier  advance  (Luke  ii.  52)  should 
have  been  stayed  when  he  reached  the  period  of  intense 
activity  which  would  most  have  furthered  such  advance. 
And  since  there  is  no  finer  test  of  character  than  its  behav- 
ior under  access  of  fresh  light,  particularly  when  one  is 
amidst  life,  I  should  be  sorry  to  think  of  the  Saviour  as  not 
knowing  the  fellowship  with  us  of  such  character-testing. 
"  It  behoved  him  in  all  things  to  be  made  like  unto  his 
brethren  "  (Heb.  ii.  17). 


1 6         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 


Saint  Paul  of  First  and  Second  Corinthians. 
The  Saint  John  of  the  Epistles  sweeps  a  wider 
horizon  than  the  Saint  John  at  the  Beautiful 
Gate  of  the  Temple.  On  the  open  vision 
of  the  Greek  Fathers  succeeds  the  dogmatic 
rigidity  of  the  Latin  Fathers.  Anselm  treads 
broader  fields  than  Gregory  the  Great. 
Luther,  Zwingle,  Calvin,  exploit  new  fields, 
and  dissentiently.  Jonathan  Edwards  leads  a 
new  movement  in  the  religious  thought  of 
New  England,  as  well  as  that  revival  of  its  re- 
ligious life  known  as  the  "  Great  Awakening." 
The  history,  in  short,  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  of  the  New,  that  which  gave  signifi- 
cance and  permanence  to  the  writings  there 
gathered,  is  progress,  clearer  and  yet  clearer 
apprehensions  of  truth.  The  history,  too,  of 
the  Christian  Church,  as  Professor  Allen,  of 
our  city,  has  so  admirably  outlined  in  his  book, 
"  The  Continuity  of  Christian  Thought,"  is 
a  history  of  the  unfolding  of  Christian  ideas. 
As  I  said,  there  always  has  been  a  newer 
religious  thinking.  Those  ages  which  seem 
to  have  been  motionless,  and  their  thought 
dormant,  were  moving.     There  was  many  a 


This   Thinking  Characterized.  17 

mornine    star   of    the    Reformation    in    the 
Middle-Age  night. 

And  as  there  always  has  been  a  newer  re- 
ligious thinking,  so  there  is  to-day.  A  book 
has  been  shown  me,  which  belonged  to  the 
late  Rev.  Asa  Bullard.  It  is  marked,  "  To 
be  preserved,  as  it  is  my  only  copy."  It  is 
without  titlepage.  It  is  Horace  Bushnell's 
"  Christian  Nurture."  It  never  got  far 
enouo^h  in  the  hands  of  the  Massachusetts 
Sabbath  School  Society,  of  which  Mr.  Bullard 
was  the  executive,  —  now  our  Congrega- 
tional Sunday  School  and  Publishing  So- 
ciety, —  to  have  a  titlepage  or  an  imprint. 
Why }  Because  certain  m.en  who  saw  its 
advance  sheets  pronounced  it  heresy,  and 
raised  such  an  alarm  about  it  that  it  was 
suppressed.  That  book,  issued  by  other 
publishers,  is  now  a  classic.  Nobody  is 
afraid  of  it.  Mr.  Bullard  rejoiced  in  it,  as, 
for  aught   I    know,  he    did    from   the  start.^ 

1  Mr.  Bullard  died  April  5,  1888,  aged  eighty-four  years 
and  ten  days.  He  had  been  a  member  of  Prospect  Street 
Church  since  1857.  A  window  to  his  memory  was  put  into 
the  church  at  Easter,  1892.  Its  subject  is,  "  Christ  Bless- 
ing Little  Children,"  after  Hofmann.     It  is  inscribed:  "In 

2 


1 8        The  Newer  Religious  Thi^iking, 

When  Professor  Park  was  transferred  from 
the  chair  of  Homiletics  to  that  of  Theology 
at  Andover,  he  was  considered  by  man}^  a 
very  dangerous  man.  Controversy  regarding 
his  teachings  waxed  hot.  Pamphlets,  reviews, 
newspapers,  assailed  him.  Now  he  is  re- 
garded as  a  bulwark  of  orthodoxy.  When 
Prof.  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor  w^as  teaching  at 
New  Haven,  sixty  years  ago,  matters  now 
of  commonest  acceptance,  Connecticut  was 
convulsed  to  its  centre  with  religious  alarm 
against  him,  and  the  Seminary  at  East  Wind- 
sor, now  Hartford  Seminary,  was  established 
to  save  the  faith  from  his  ravages.  An  elderly 
Englishman  has  recently  contributed  to  one 
of  our  reviews,  from  personal  recollection, 
the  story  of  three  religious  panics  in  Great 
Britain,  of  a  similar  type,  about  matters 
that  have  ceased  to  give  men  anxiety.  But 
let  me  summon  you  yourselves  as  vritnesses. 

Loving  Memor}'  of  the  Children's  IMinister,  Rev.  Asa  Bal- 
lard :  Born,  1804;  Died,  1888  :  From  Prospect  Street  Church 
and  Sabbath  School."  Mr.  Bullard  did  not  agree  in  all 
respects  theologically  either  with  Dr.  Bushnell  or  with  the 
writer.  The  allusion  here  is  only  to  his  attitude  toward  Dr. 
Bushnell's  book  on  the  Christian  upbringing  of  children. 


This  Thinking  Characterized,  19 


Probably  all  of  you  whose  lives  have  cov- 
ered as  many  as  twenty-five  or  thirty  years 
have,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  some- 
what changed  your  thought  on  religious 
matters.  If  you  have  not,  I  condole  with 
you.  Twenty-five  or  thirty  years  in  such  a 
world  as  this  ought  somewhat  to  modify  the 
ablest  thinking  even  on  religious  subjects. 

Now  what  does  this  mean  ?  Does  it  im- 
ply that  the  facts  at  the  basis  of  religion  are 
not  trustworthy?  Does  it  insinuate  that 
everything  in  religion  is  relative,  and  a  mere 
matter  of  point  of  view  ?  Not  at  all.  Such 
inferences  were  as  absurd  as  to  have  inferred, 
when  men  were  gradually  accepting  the 
Copernican  astronomy,  or  modern  geology, 
that  sun  and  stars  and  earth  were  not  trust- 
worthy, and  were  only  relative,  and  matters  of 
point  of  view.  Sun,  stars,  earth,  in  common 
with  the  facts  at  the  basis  of  religion,  change 
not.  But  man's  measure  of  them,  grasp  of 
them,  knowledge  of  them,  and  impressible- 
ness  by  them,  change  with  the  growing  mind 
and  heart  of  man. 

So  far  is  such  a  state  of  thino's  as  I  have 


20         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 


been  describing  from  being  ground  for 
alarm,  that  it  is  ground,  the  rather,  for 
devout  and  unspeakable  joy.  As  Kepler 
cried  out,  on  discovering  the  clew  to  the 
computation  of  the  orbits  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  "  I  think  God's  thoughts  after  him  ! " 
so  does  Saint  Paul  speak  of  the  mystery  hid 
through  the  ages,  but  now  made  known,  and 
affirm  that  the  chiefest  of  the  apostles  only 
sees  as  yet  "  in  a  mirror,  darkly,"  but  shall 
see  "face  to  face."  Every  man,  by  reason 
of  such  a  state  of  the  case,  becomes  a  discov- 
erer of  truths  divine,  and  a  medium  through 
whom  others  may  receive  the  knowledge  of 
such  truths ;  and  the  way  is  thus  left  open 
for  an  infinite  progress  in  knowing,  appre- 
ciating, and  using  the  facts  of  religion.  Any 
other  state  of  the  case  would  make  future 
history  a  blank,  and  eternity  a  horror.  For 
the  world  to  go  on,  with  progress  in  the  ap- 
prehension of  religious  truth  at  an  end, — 
seeing  that  religious  truth  is  the  deepest,  the 
sweetest,  the  most  transforming,  —  and  for 
men,  out  of  this  world's  toil,  sweat,  travail, 
weariness,  and  defeat,  to  be  hurried  on  into 


This  T/mtking-  Characterized.  2 1 


an  eternity  in  which  our  earth  thoughts  and 
earth  measures  of  God  were  a  finality,  would 
be  a  fate  of  history  and  of  humanity  too  fear- 
ful to  contemplate.  But  such  is  not  the  fate, 
as  these  phenomena,  from  the  earliest  He- 
brew history  until  this  hour,  abundantly  and 
gloriously  prove. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  make  even  a 
cursory  study  of  the  progress  of  religious 
thoucrht  in  the  Old  Testament ;  of  the 
same  progress  during  the  perhaps  four 
centuries  between  Malachi  and  Christ ; 
and  of  the  same  in  the  New  Testament. 
This  is  a  distinctively  modern  study,  and 
is  yet  in  its  infancy.  Toward  it  the  new 
chairs  of  Biblical  Theology,  in  various  in- 
stitutions, are  contributing.  With  it,  for 
comprehensiveness  and  balance,  the  study 
of  other,  and  especially  of  contemporaneous 
religions,  needs  to  go,  — "  comparative  re- 
ligions," as  that  study  is  often  called.  The 
same  sort  of  study,  similarly  paralleled,  for 
the  Christian  ages,  would  also  be  of  great 
interest. 

Fresher,  because  more  recent,  accessible. 


2  2         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

and  in  touch  with  current  thinking,  would 
be  a  study  of  this  progress  during  the 
present  century,  and  particularly  in  Great 
Britain ;  because  the  study  of  that  portion  of 
it  would  include  a  relatively  compact  terri- 
tory, history,  and  group  of  men.  For  this 
last,  as  I  referred  to  Professor  Allen's  "  Con- 
tinuity of  Christian  Thought,"  in  reference  to 
the  Christian  ages,  let  me  commend  TuUoch's 
"  Movements  of  Religious  Thought  in  Brit- 
ain during  the  Nineteenth  Century."  In 
these  movements,  the  poets,  of  some  of 
whom  we  have  been  thinking  together  re- 
cently, have  had  a  far  greater  hand  than 
Professor  TuUoch  indicates,  —  he  having  in 
that  book  treated  only  of  distinctively  reli- 
gious writers.  Tennyson's  "  In  Memoriam," 
for  example,  marks  a  great  "  divide "  and 
new  upland  in  our  century's  outlook  toward 
immortality.  That  service  to  human  think- 
inof  would  have  been,  of  itself,  an  immeas- 
urable  gift  to  the  world,  had  the  Laureate 
written  nothing  else. 

We  cannot,  however,  go  into  these  matters 
now.     But  there  is  a  practical  question  we 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  23 


can  go  into.  The  question  is  this  :  What 
business  have  we  to  mutiny  against  this  law 
of  our  being,  the  law  of  the  Bible,  the  law  of 
religious  history,  the  law  which  hinders  the 
future  from  being  a  blank  and  eternity  a 
horror,  and  go  heresy-hunting  ?  They  stoned 
heretics  in  the  Old  Testament.  They  cut 
off  their  heads  and  crucified  them  in  the 
New.  They  invented  the  horrors  of  the  In- 
quisition for  them  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
We  build  the  sepulchres  of  those  heretics. 
We  are  always  quoting  them  and  praising 
them.  We  know  that  they  discovered  truth 
for  us,  and  made  the  world  better  for  us. 
Why,  then,  do  we  start  off  to  be  the  ruin  of 
heretics  now  ?  Why  do  we  hold  the  clothes 
of  them  that  stone  them  1  Have  we  not  a 
measure  of  common-sense  ?  Do  we  care  to 
repeat  the  folly  of  trying  to  suppress  the 
Horace  Bushnells,  the  Nathaniel  W.  Taylors, 
the  Professor  Parks,  of  nowadays.?  Surely 
we  shall  be  laughed  at  some  day  for  doing 
this.  Perhaps  we  shall  live  long  enough  to 
laugh  at  ourselves.  Mr.  Bullard,  with  his 
sense  of  humor,  must  have  edg^ed  off  into  a 


24         The  Newer  Religious  TJiinkijig, 

smile  and  then  into  a  laugh,  when  he  saw 
that  poor  thin  little  Bushnell  book,  without 
any  titlepage  or  imprint,  and  with  its  "  To  be 
preserved,  as  it  is  my  only  copy."  There 
were  soon  copies  enough. 

Turning,  however,  from  these  reflections, 
let  us  notice,  first,  certain  indications,  and 
then  certain  characteristics,  of  the  newer  re- 
ligious thinking  at  the  present  time. 

I.  Certain  indications. 

1.  And,  to  begin  with,  even  unbelief,  in 
its  truer,  more  typical  phases,  is  in  a  hopeful 
state  of  newness  and  progress.  It  does  not 
scoff;  it  is  sorry  not  to  believe.  Its  quarrel 
is  with  extreme  partisans  of  faith,  not  with 
those  humble,  teachable  souls  who  live  their 
faith.  Witness  divisions  xxxi.,  xxxii.,  and 
XXXIII.,  of  "  In  Memoriam  "  as  an  expression, 
indeed  from  a  somewhat  different  point  of 
view,  of  this  new  attitude. 

2.  Those  Christians,  moreover,  commonly 
termed  "  unevangelical "  are  likewise  in  a 
certain  refreshing  newness  and  progress  of 
thought.  Those  of  them  often  called  "  radi- 
cals," while  moving  away  from  some  of  the 


This  Thmking  Characterized,  25 

simpler  facts  of  religion,  are  in  many  in- 
stances taking  the  most  commendable  steps 
toward  the  practical  aspects  of  the  religious 
life ;  while  the  so-called  "  moderates "  are 
adopting  thoughts  and  methods  which  bring 
them  nearer  to  the  so-called  "  evangelical  " 
religionists.  They  hunger  for  a  warmer, 
more  pronounced  religious  experience;  for 
meetings  for  prayer ;  for  mission  work ;  for 
such  work  even  anion 2^  the  heathen ;  and 
for  some  ground  of  unity  which  ma}'-  bring 
them  into  closer  touch  with  the  Church 
universal. 

This  might  be  abundantly  illustrated  were 
there  time.  The  odium  theologicum,  if  not 
passed,  is  passing.  And  as  a  liberal  spirit 
among  so-called  "  Evangelicals  "  is  often  the 
cause  of  much  reproach  to  its  possessors,  so 
among  the  classes  already  referred  to,  those 
who  are  moving  in  this  newness  and  prog- 
ress are  often  maligned  for  doing  so.  The 
superintendent  of  the  non-sectarian  East 
End  Christian  Union,  of  our  city,  tells  of 
meeting  a  Trinitarian  who  did  not  want  to 
contribute  toward  it  because  it  was  too  lib- 


26         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

eral,  and  then  a  Unitarian  who  found  fault 
with  it  because  it  was  too  orthodox.  And 
with  the  thought  underlying  the  superin- 
tendents plain  rejoinder,  "  I  told  both  of 
them  that  I  had  no  use  for  such  men,"  the 
truer  spirits  of  both  wings  will  tend  more 
and  more  to  agree. 

3.  Think,  again,  how  in  the  Church  of 
Rome  there  are  also  the  progressives ;  how 
the  present  Pope  is  in  this  respect  an  ad- 
vance on  the  last ;  how  men  like  the  revered 
pastor  of  one  of  our  Cambridge  Catholic 
churches,  while  no  less  Catholics,  are  push- 
ing forward  —  often  at  the  expense  of  that 
obloquy  from  their  associates  which  the 
prophets  and  apostles  of  progress  have  gen- 
erally to  encounter  —  into  a  practical  fellow- 
ship with  religious  m.en  outside  their  ancient 
communion. 

4.  Once  more,  in  the  religious  bodies 
nearer  ourselves  than  any  of  these,  reflect, 
for  example,  on  the  coming  of  the  Episco- 
pal Church  toward  Phillips  Brooks  ;  on  the 
tightening  fellowship  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  which   revolts  from  schism    in    the 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  27 

case  of  Union  Seminary  and  of  Professor 
Briggs,  whom  such  organs  of  conservatism 
as  the  "  New  York  Observer "  have  long 
been  scourging  outrageously ;  and  on  the 
disposition  of  our  own  denomination  to  in- 
clude rather  than  to  expel  men,  churches, 
and  institutions  of  learning,  on  which  a  sec- 
tion of  the  religious  press  has  waged  war  for 
years.^ 

In  the  light  of  facts  like  these,  it  may  be 
unhesitatingly  affirmed  that  there  is  a  greater 
unity  amidst  diversity,  a  greater  respect  for 
differences  of  opinion,  a  greater  bringing  of 
all  questions  to  the  test  of  life  and  of  spirit, 
and  a  larger,  truer  thinking  about  God,  and 

1  On  the  primary  movement  now  going  on  in  human  nature 
toward  inclusiveness  and  .sohdarity,  see  Professor  Tucker's 
memorable  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration  at  Harvard,  June  30, 
1892.  These  sentences  in  it  bear  on  that  portion  of  the  sub- 
ject here  alluded  to  :  — 

"  Questions  are  arising  in  our  time,  and  passing  into  heat- 
ed discussion,  of  the  most  fundamental  and  vital  kind,  which 
in  other  times  would  have  split  the  most  compact  body, 
but  thus  far  they  have  not  divided  a  single  communion.  The 
one  ecclesiastical  sin  of  our  age  is  schism.  Of  that  alone 
we  are  intolerant"  (pp.  18,  19). 

The  Oration  is  entitled,  "  The  New  Movement  in  Human- 
ity from  Liberty  to  Unity."  Houghton,  Mifflin,  and  Com- 
pany, Boston.     1892. 


2S         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

life,  and  truth,  to-day,  among  religious  people 
the  likest  to  ourselves,  than  there  has  ever 
been  before  ;  and    that  we,  in    this    respect, 
are,  as    I   have   intimated,  wittingly    or    un- 
wittingly, in   the    current   of    a  great  world- 
movement    in    similar   directions,  embracino^ 
"  Unevangelicals  "  as  well  as  "Evangelicals," 
Catholics    as    well    as    Protestants,    and    the 
truer  types  of  unbelievers  as  well  as  believers. 
Thus  is  the  prayer,  "  Thy  kingdom  come," 
getting  its  answer,  —  slowly,  with  many  a  re- 
verse, with  sore  travail  still,  but  surely.     He 
whose  right  it  is  already  reigns,  and  is  mar- 
shalling events,  movements,    men,    opinions, 
into  compacter,  truer  lines  of  tendency,  ex- 
pectation, and  promise;  all    of  which   shall 
eventuate     according     to     that     "  heavenly 
vision "  which,  whether  we  will    or   not,  we 
cannot    choose    but    obey,    and    the    ending 
whereof  the  wisest  and  the  most  far-siQ:hted 
only  sees  as  "  in  a  mirror,  darkly." 

II.  Next,  and  in  conclusion,  let  us  try  to 
fix  in  our  minds  certain  characteristics  of 
the  newer  religious  thinking  of  our  time. 

I.  One  of  them  is  its  scientific  temper. 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  29 

The  thinking  of  which  I  speak  is  not 
going  on  in  this  century  of  the  vastest  ex- 
pansion of  the  boundaries  of  knowledge 
that  the  world  has  ever  known  without 
being  affected  at  once  by  the  knowledge, 
and  by  those  processes  of  induction  and  of 
deduction  by  which  the  knowledge  has  come. 
It  grows  tired  of  theories.  It  wants  facts. 
After  these  it  is  groping  everywhere,  —  in 
the  world  of  nature,  in  the  field  of  archaeol- 
ogy, in  that  mighty  research  for  a  true 
account  of  the  origin  of  the  human  species, 
often  caricatured  as  a  trying  to  prove  one's 
descent  from  apes,  but  a  far  deeper  and 
wider  reaching  investigation  than  the  cari- 
caturists dream  ;  in  heredity,  too,  in  animal 
psychology,  in  sociology,  in  the  history  of 
opinions,  and  in  those  seers,  the  prophets, 
psalmists,  and  poets  of  all  time. 

It  wants  the  truth,  nothing  but  the  truth, 
and  will  have  it  at  all  hazards  ;  and  is  un- 
alterably purposed  to  count  nothing  finally 
settled,  until  it  matches  in  with  God's  whole 
book  of  nature  as  well  as  of  grace,  and  of 
the  human  heart  as  well  as  of  metaphysics. 


30         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

And  since  there  is  no  schism  in  the  truth, 
but  truth  agrees  with  itself,  verifies  itself, 
and  is  a  unit}^  we  ought  to  be  devoutly 
thankful  that  such  a  purpose  marks  the 
newer  religious  thinking. 

2.  Another  characteristic  of  this  thinking 
is  its  practical  bent. 

"  What  can  religion  do  for  a  man  ? "  it 
seems  forever  to  be  asking.  That  which, 
more  than  anything  else,  has  sickened  it  of 
over-confidence  in  certain  systematic  ways 
of  looking  at  truth  is  the  miserable  fruit 
of  such  systems.  It  does  not  want  a  reli- 
gion professing  to  follow  the  forgiving  Jesus, 
if  that  religion  does  not  make  men  forgiv- 
ing. It  does  not  want  a  religion  of  love 
which  does  not  make  men  loving.  It  does 
not  want  a  religion  which  teaches  that  all 
men  are  brothers,  if  it  produces  the  class 
distinctions,  the  outrageous  disparities  be- 
tween wealth  and  poverty,  and  that  luxuri- 
ous selfishness  so  common,  hardly  less  in 
the  Church  than  out  of  it,  in  our  time. 

Furthermore,  when  it  accepts  religion, 
albeit  never  so  devotedly,  it  is  not  content 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  31 

with  prayers,  sacraments,  sound  doctrine, 
and  relio^ious  routine.  In  these  it  believes. 
But  it  wants  something  adequate  to  show 
for  them  in  deeds.  It  Is  wlUing  to  invest 
heavily  in  religion,  but  demands  dividends 
in  bettered  lives,  ennobled  communities,  and 
truer  political,  economic,  intellectual,  and  so- 
cial conditions. 

3.  Yet  another  characteristic  of  the  newer 
religious  thinking  is  its  purpose  to  include 
in  its  concept  the  entire  religious  impulse  of 
the  world. 

When  "  they  therefore  that  were  scattered 
abroad  upon  the  tribulation  that  arose  about 
Stephen  travelled  "  far,  "  speaking  the  word 
to  none  save  only  to  Jews,"  until  an  almost 
accidental  experiment  taught  them  better, 
they  did  what  religion  has  characteristi- 
cally done  until  our  time.  That  God  was 
with  and  in  the  religious  life  of  the  Egyptians, 
Assyrians,  Greeks,  Romans,  etc.,  as  well  as 
with  and  in  the  religious  life  of  the  Hebrews, 
has  been  little  recognized  until  recently.  But 
he  was.  No  race,  no  people,  no  hlstor}^  has 
a  monopoly  of  religion.     Religion  is  a  great 


32         The  Newer  Religiotts  Thinking. 

fact.  It  is  a  part  of  the  race  of  man.  It  is 
the  correlation  of  man  and  what  is  above 
and  beyond  him. 

The  newer  rehgious  thinking  recognizes 
this  comprehensiveness.  It  is  trying  to  un- 
derstand all  religions.  It  hopes,  through  the 
religions  and  religious  impulses  of  all  peo- 
ples, to  bring  in  the  simpler,  clearer,  and 
final  religion.  Hence  the  men  of  faith  are 
reaching  out  and  striking  hands  with  the 
men  who,  until  recently,  would  have  been 
called  the  men  not  of  faith,  to  help  them  and 
to  receive  help.  To  illustrate  what  I  mean  : 
Almost  no  man  ever  helped  me  more  in 
spiritual  things  —  I  say,  please  note,  "  helped 
me,"  not  I  him  —  than  a  friend  of  mine,  now 
passed  on  into  the  infinite  light,  who  was  to 
such  an  extent  an  agnostic  that,  for  a  long 
time,  he  could  not  so  much  as  pray.  But 
his  life  was  a  faith,  a  prayer,  a  holiness,  such 
that  he  was  a  new  manifestation  of  God  to 
my  life,  and  to  the  lives  of  all  who  knew 
him.-^  In  such  a  sense  as  this,  the  men  of 
faith  are  striking  hands  with  men  hitherto 

1  It  is  to  his  memory  that  this  book  is  inscribed. 


This  Thinking  Characterized,  33 

generally   counted   not  of  faith,   for  mutual 
help. 

Similarly  the  newer  religious  thinking 
despairs  not  that  the  different  divisions  of 
Christendom,  heretofore  seemingly  hope- 
lessly estranged,  and  all  theistic  religions, 
and  indeed  all  religions,  have  contributions 
to  make  toward,  and  in  some  sense  a  place 
to  take  in,  the  ampler  and  more  adequate 
religious  life  that  is  to  be.  This  is  the 
same  thing  as  to  say,  not  only  that  the 
newer  religious  thinking  has  a  scientific 
temper,  but  that  it  has  at  length  come 
to  recognize  religion  in  its  every  form  as 
a  great,  scientific,  and  mightily  instructive 
fact.  Please  observe  that,  in  making  this 
statement,  I  have  no  time  to  define  and 
clarify  it.  Because  I  do  not  do  so,  it  may 
be  that  I  shall  be  misunderstood.  But  when 
"  men  of  every  tribe,  and  tongue,  and  people, 
and  nation  "  are  represented  as  contributing 
to  the  apocalyptic  glory,  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  believe  that  the  religions,  and  religi- 
ous capacities,  receptivities,  and  aptitudes  of 
"  every  tribe,  and  tongue,   and   people,  and 

3 


34         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

nation  "  are  not  also  taken  into  the  account, 
and  given  their  range  and  use.  "  God,"  we 
read,  "is  no  respecter  of  persons;"  and  I 
beg  leave  to  doubt  if,  any  more,  he  is  a 
respecter  of   religions. 

4.  Finally,  while  the  newer  religious 
thinking  is  scientific  in  temper,  practical  in 
bent,  and  is  enlarging  its  concept  of  religion, 
let  no  man  say,  or  even  imagine,  that  this 
thinking  is  other  than  inspired  by,  and 
obedient  unto,  a  "  heavenly  vision,"  which 
ever  hovers  in  its  foreground,  and  beckons 
it  on. 

The  boundaries  of  its  belief  may  be  les- 
sened, for  it  doubts  much  ;  but  the  depths 
and  heights  of  that  belief  are  infinite.  Out 
on  a  simple,  real,  honest  confidence  it  ven- 
tures, like  Abraham  scarce  knowing  whither 
it  goes,  but  sure  that  it  must  leave  not  only 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  but  Haran,  and  come 
into  a  place  which  it  is  after  to  receive  for 
an  inheritance. 

God,  for  it,  is  no  longer  in  a  creed,  how- 
ever true  the  creed  may  be ;  nor  in  any 
book,    however    priceless;    nor   in    any    or- 


This  Thinking  Characterized.  35 

ganization,  however  venerable  and  sacred  ; 
nor  in  any  form  or  observance,  however 
helpful  in  itself;  nor  here,  nor  there,  nor 
accessible  in  thus  and  such  a  manner;  but 
God  is  with  the  man,  —  in  him,  about  him, 
beyond  him,  his  Father,  Helper,  Friend,  and 
All-sufficiency. 

And  he  himself  is  in  God's  universe,  nor 
ever  can  get  out  of  it ;  so  that  even  mys- 
terious heaven  grows  simple,  being  God's  ; 
and  he  does  not  crave  so  much  to  be  in 
heaven,  even,  as  to  be  in  such  a  mind  as 
God  is  in,  and  as  to  be  helping  some  other 
God's-child,  his  brother,  though  he  were 
fathoming  hell  to  find  him. 

And  for  him  fear  is  done;  for  has  not 
perfect  love  cast  it  out?  And  hope  is  ever 
fresh ;  for  can  he  ever  wholly  find  out  God, 
or  sound  God's  love's-depth  ?  And  as  for 
motive,  of  the  want  or  badness  whereof  so 
many  complain,  that  is  no  longer  his  solici- 
tude ;  for  has  not  the  same  marched  on 
him,  seized  him,  and  possessed  itself  of  him 
forever,  even  the  movement  of  none  other 
than  the   living  God  motive   henceforth    in 


36         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

him  ?  True,  he  expects  nothing  other  than 
to  descend  again  and  again  into  the  depths, 
—  cast  down  many  a  time,  defeated,  spent ; 
but  went  there  not  One  before  him  thither  ? 
Shall  he  not  follow  so  kingly  a  Forerunner? 
And  has  not  all  this  a  purpose  ? 

But,  truth  to  tell,  he  is  reluctant  so  much 
as  to  think  of  himself.  Self,  in  fact,  is  get- 
ting out  of  him.  Truth,  reality,  God,  are 
getting  in.  Herein,  too,  he  is  "  not  diso- 
bedient unto  the  heavenly  vision,"  and  there- 
fore wots  not  that  that  vision  is  even  now 
transfiguring  him,  and  that  something  of 
eternity  already  shines  in  his  face. 


ITS    HUNGER   AFTER   GOD. 


SYNOPSIS. 

Hunger  after  God  the  propulsion  of  newer  religious  think- 
ing. —  Jacob  and  Moses  illustrate  this.  —  Why  it  is  neces- 
sarily so.  —  The  receivers  and  revel  ators  of  larger  religious 
truth  have  become  such  by  reason  of  their  hunger  for  it  (exam- 
ples). —  Sketch  of  the  upgrowth  of  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing of  our  time.  —  The  newer  literature  contained  it,  in 
principle,  but  religious  thinkers  were  specially  its  channel. 
—  Coleridge  and  Bushnell ;  their  wide  influence.  —  The 
Tractarians.  —  Necessarily,  over  against  the  two  tendencies 
represented  by  the  foregoing,  came  Arnold,  ■  Robertson, 
Maurice,  Kingsley,  etc.  —  Their  application  of  religion  to 
life.  —  The  Germanic  contribution ;  contrast  between  it  and 
the  Anglo-Saxon.  —  The  thinking  of  this  decade  an  advance 
on  that  outlined  above,  by  reason  of  ampler  data  through 
long  inductive  work.  —  America,  until  recently,  provincial 
in  this  matter.  —  The  sketch  suggests  how  hunger  after  God 
has  impelled  the  movement.  —  Personal  testimony.  —  This 
hunger  necessitates  image-breaking  in  theology.  —  Mr. 
Beecher's  remarks  in  connection  with  his  "  Background  of 
Mystery,"  —  Some  idols  needing  overthrow  :  (i)  The  machine 
thought  of  God ;  there  is  a  Biblical  pantheism ;  (2)  Exag- 
geration of  the  idea  of  God  as  ruler  ;  God  not  mainly  that ; 
(3)  Undue  insistence  on  the  philosophy  of  the  Trinity  ;  how 
far  that  doctrine  may  rightly  go ;  (4)  God  in  Christ  as 
mainly  governmental  or  forensic;  the  facts  can  never  be 
included  under  this  category  ;  Christ  a  vital,  living,  present 
Saviour.  —  Other  idols  suggested.  —  The  Good  Tidings 
unspeakably  hurt  by  such  misrepresentations  of  God.  —  The 
Church,  the  clergy,  the  laity,  in  fact  all  true  souls,  have 
herein  a  heavy  responsibility  laid  on  them. 


II. 

ITS    HUNGER  AFTER   GOD.i 

And  J^acob  asked  him,  and  said,  Tell  7?ie,  I  pray  thee, 
thy  na77ie.  —  Genesis  xxxii.  29. 

And  Afoses  said  unto  God,  Behold,  luhen  I  come  unto 
the  children  of  Israel,  and  shall  say  unto  them,  The 
God  of  your  fathei's  hath  sent  me  icnto  you  ;  and  they 
shall  say  to  me.  What  is  his  name  ?  what  shall  I 
say  unto  them  ?  —  Exodus  iii.  13. 

And  he  said.  Show  me,  I  pray  thee,  thy  glory,  —  Exodus 
xxxiii.  18. 


T 


HE  newer  religious  thinking  of  the 
present  proves  its  kinship  to  the  newer 
religious  thinking  of  all  time  in  finding  its 
propulsion  in  a  profound  hunger  after  God. 

Jacob,  who  wished  to  know  the  name  of 
his  mysterious  visitor,  and  Moses,  who  put 
the  same  question,  and  desired  to  behold 
God's  glory,  epitomize  the  natural  history 
of  all  truly  unfolding  religious  thought. 
Here  is    the  man  ;    somewhere,  in   him,  be- 

1  Prospect  Street,  Sunday  night,  November  6,  1892. 


40         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

yond  him,  is  infinite  reality,  —  in  one  word, 
God.  Religion  is  that  verity,  partly  concep- 
tual, partly  factual,  which  correlates  the  two. 
And  because  life  is  life,  because  the  living 
man  thinks,  feels,  and  grows,  his  thought  of 
this  verity,  his  conception  of  religion,  grows. 
But  the  object  of  his  conception,  namely, 
religion,  being  a  correlation,  being  a  some- 
thinsf  from  within  him  as  well  as  from  be- 
yond  him,  he  is  not  passive  in  his  growing 
religious  thought.  He  is  active  ;  he  thinks  ; 
he  feels.  He  strives  to  clarify  his  thinking 
and  feeling;  he  hungers  after  knowledge 
of  the  infinite ;  he  yearns  toward  God. 
"  Tell  me,  I  pray  thee,  thy  name,"  he  cries  ; 
"  Show  me,  I  pray  thee,  thy  glory."  And 
the  hunger,  the  cry,  the  attitude  of  interest 
and  inquiry  before  that  bush,  burning  but 
not  consumed,  which  the  universe  is,  and  the 
struggle,  as  of  one  wrestling  in  the  night, 
with  the  mysterious  problems  of  life  and  of 
destiny,  predispose  a  man  to  receive  impres- 
sions, light,  and  new  religious  life.  "He 
that  seeketh,  findeth." 

It  is  not,  therefore,  by  accident  or  partial- 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  41 

ity  that  the  wrestling  Jacobs,  and  the  inquir- 
inof  and  seeking:  men  like  Moses,  receive, 
each  in  his  fashion,  new  thoughts,  ideals, 
and  principles  in  the  range  of  religion. 
Indeed,  it  might  be  summarily  said,  without 
fear  of  successful  contradiction,  that  the 
receivers  and  revelators  of  larger  truth,  par- 
ticularly in  the  realm  of  religion,  —  whether 
they  have  been  such  receivers  and  revelators 
publicly  or  privately,  in  a  widely  recognized 
manner  or  not,  or  within  the  bounds  of  one 
form  of  religion  or  of  another,  — have  become 
the  channels  for  receiving  and  revealing  such 
larger  truth,  through  their  own  hunger  for 
it,  their  own  impressibleness  by  it,  and  their 
own  receptivity  and  responsiveness  to  it. 

Thus  all  the  newer  religious  thinking, 
worthy  the  name,  whether  in  the  past  or  in 
the  present,  has  had  its  spring  in  hunger 
after  God.  Jacob  and  Moses,  Samuel  and 
David,  Elijah  and  Isaiah,  Saint  Paul  and 
Saint  John,  Origen  and  Augustine,  Gregory 
the  Great  and  Anselm,  Luther  and  Knox, 
John  Bunyan  and  Jonathan  Edwards,  John 
Wesley  and  John  Henry  Newman,  Maurice 


42         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

and  Bushnell,  Phillips  Brooks  and  Father 
Hall,  —  these,  in  common  with  the  lowliest 
waiters  on  truth  divine,  have  received  and 
given  out  the  divine  impulse,  as  hungering 
for  it,  seeking  it,  filled  with  it,  transformed  by 
it,  and  as  thereby  the  mediums  through  which 
it  has  passed  into  the  possession  of  mankind. 
What  a  lesson  is  there  not  for  us  here,  to  be 
open,  receptive,  hungering  toward  God,  and, 
as  freely  receiving,  so  to  be  freely  giving ! 
For  of  this  trul}^  sacramental  privilege,  as  of 
that  other  spoken  of  by  Lowell,  it  remains 
true  that  — 

"The  Holy  Supper  is  kept,  indeed, 
In  whatso  we  share  with  another's  need ; 
Not  what  we  give,  but  what  we  share,  — 
For  the  gift  without  the  giver  is  bare." 

But,  to  be  more  specific  :  — 

I.  Let  us,  in  the  first  place,  bring  rapidly 
before  our  minds  a  little  of  the  way  in  which 
this  century's  newer  religious  thinking  has 
come  down  to  us;  and  let  us  be  asking  our- 
selves meanwhile  whether,  looked  at  as  re- 
gards the  men  identified  with  it,  this  thinking 
is  not  akin,  as  I  observed  at  the  outset,  to  the 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  43 

newer  religious  thinking  of  all  time,  in  find- 
ing its  propulsion  in  a  profound  hunger  after 
God. 

This  thinking,  with  its  corresponding 
hunger,  then,  let  us  not  forget,  was  already 
abroad,  in  less  definite  manifestation,  in 
the  newer  literature  which  ushered  in  this 
century,  —  in  Burns,  for  example,  and  Cole- 
ridge, and  Wordsworth,  yes,  even  in  Shelley. 
It  was  caught  up  and  developed  in  our  epoch- 
marking  poets,  in  Tennyson,  in  Lowell,  in 
Browning. 

But  in  men  approaching  with  an  especially 
religious  wistfulness  the  burning  bush  of  the 
universe,  the  Peniel  of  human  existence,  it 
most  strongly  appeared.  Coleridge,  now 
thought  of  as  religious  thinker  rather  than 
as  poet,  made  a  way  for  it  in  England ; 
Bushnell,  in  America.^  It  is  difficult  for  us 
of  the  immediate  present  to  understand  how 

1  No  study  of  the  history  of  this  subject,  in  America, 
should  omit  the  relation  to  it  of  Dr.  Channing,  Theodore 
Parker,  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  Nor,  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  should  the  impulse  toward  earnestness,  reality, 
and  moral  enthusiasm  which  was  afforded  by  Thomas  Car- 
lyle  be  overlooked. 


44         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

vast  was  the  influence  which  Coleridge  ex- 
erted on  the  religious  thinkers  of  the  genera- 
tion now  ao-ino^  and  asfed  on  both  sides  the 
Atlantic.  One  of  that  generation,  a  leader 
of  that  branch  of  the  Christian  Church  of 
which  he  was  a  clergyman,  and  now  long 
passed  on  into  eternal  light,  told  me,  in  the 
first  year  of  my  ministry,  that  Coleridge  was 
as  real  a  personality  to  him  as  if  he  had  been 
his  companion  and  intimate  friend.  He  had 
entered  as  living  power  into  that  man's  life. 
Bushnell  had  a  like  influence.  He  was  read 
abroad  with  hardly  less  interest  than  in 
America.  He  was  particularly  powerful 
in  the  pulpit.  His  prayers  were  as  if 
he  stood  in  the  presence-chamber,  not  only 
of  infinite  majesty,  but  of  infinite  truth  and 
clearness  of  vision  and  power  of  illumina- 
tion. In  advanced  age,  in  the  chapel  of 
Yale  College,  preaching  as  I  never  heard 
other  mortal  preach,  he  first  gave  me  —  in 
crude  beginnings  —  some  grasp  on  things 
eternal.  Both  men  were  John  the  Baptists, 
forerunners  of  our  new  temper  in  religion. 
They  were  dwelling  ever  on  the  spirit  and 


Its  Himger  after  God,  45 

meaning  of  nature,  of  events,  of  mind,  and 
of  life.  They  were  tracing  the  analogies  of 
things  natural  and  things  spiritual.  The 
title  of  one  of  Bushnell's  books,  "  Nature  and 
the  Supernatural,"  typifies  both  men. 

But  between  the  men  of  Coleridge's  tem- 
per and  the  literal  religionists  of  England, 
there  sprang  antagonisms  ;  and  amidst  the 
uncertainties  and  contentions  consequent 
thereupon,  and  due  also  to  other  causes 
which  were  likewise  at  work,  there  started  a 
type  of  newer  thinking  which  concentrated 
attention  on  institutional  Christianity,  on  the 
Church,  on  its  traditions,  usages,  and  au- 
thority. This  was  the  Tractarian  movement. 
Some  men  in  it,  like  Newman,  went  to 
Rome ;  some,  like  Pusey,  into  the  high- 
church  side  of  Protestantism.  Mightily 
stimulating  to  thought,  study,  and  the  per- 
sonal religious  life,  were  these  men.  They, 
too,  were  helpful  builders  of  the  spiritual 
temple. 

In  such  a  state  of  affairs,  because  men  in 
religion  could  neither  be  mainly  idealists,  as 
Coleridge  was,  nor  mainly  Churchmen  as  the 


46         The  Neiuer  Religious  TJiinking. 


Tractarians  were,  but  must  be  in  life,  and 
hold  a  living  faith  that  could  shape  England's 
politics  and  help  England's  poor,  that  could 
recover  a  foothold  of  trust  again  for  men 
far  gone  toward  unbelief,  and  could  satisfy 
minds  as  penetrating  as  Tennyson's  and 
Browning's,  —  there  began  to  come  forward 
men  hard  to  classify,  so  new,  fresh,  strong, 
were  their  utterances  and  their  thoughts : 
Thomas  Arnold,  Frederick  W.  Robertson, 
Frederick  Denison  ]\Iaurice,  Charles  Kings- 
ley,  and  many  others  of  a  like  temper  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  though  few  in- 
deed comparable  to  these. 

It  was  the  magnificent  service  of  such  men 
that  they  recovered  for  religion  its  hold  on 
life  :  Arnold,  for  example,  on  the  men  of 
Rugby  and  of  the  universities  ;  Robertson 
on  such  a  populous  and  frivolous  watering- 
place  as  Brighton  ;  Maurice  on  the  students 
of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  on  the  London  work- 
ingmen  ;  and  Kingsley  on  town  and  country 
living,  on  scientific  pursuits,  and  on  the  burn- 
ing questions  of  a  practical  nature  which 
were  agitating  England.     It  was  their  mag- 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  47 

nificent  service,  likewise,  to  show  that  doubt 
may  be  the  doorway  of  faith  ;  that  reason 
has  its  place  in  reh'gion,  indeed  that  reHgion 
is  the  highest  reason  ;  that,  moreover,  beyond 
formal  reason  there  is  a  reason  intuitional, 
of  insight,  of  vision,  and  of  the  living 
"  Word  "  of  God  in  men's  souls  ;  and  above 
all,  that  Christianity  is  a  present,  living,  and 
constructive  force  in  society  and  in  the  life 
of  individuals,  in  distinction  from  being  a 
tradition,  an  observance,  or  a  pious  piece  of 
partialism. 

Other  lands,  other  faiths,  and  indeed,  as  I 
suggested  in  the  last  discourse,  unfaiths,  had 
their  parts  to  contribute  to  the  newer  reli- 
gious thinking.  On  them  I  cannot  dwell 
otherwise  than  to  testify  how  greatly  the 
Teutonic  mind,  in  point  of  research,  of  sys- 
tematizing, and  of  insight,  has  stimulated 
scholarship,  has  accumulated  intellectual 
materia],  and  has  moved  philosophically 
toward  the  spirit  and  unity  of  all  religions. 
To  this  mind,  to  the  land  and  race  of 
Luther,  the  newer  religious  thinking  owes 
measureless    obligations.      Nevertheless,   for 


48         The  Newer  Religiotis  Thinkhig, 

religion  in  application,  for  it  in  its  relations 
to  the  nation,  to  society,  to  home,  and  to 
the  heart,  —  for,  in  short,  religion  in  its  more 
concrete  aspects,  —  Germany  has  not.  in  my 
judgment,  done  for  the  world  that  peculiar 
livins:  service  which  has  characterized  in 
particular  the  constructive  minds  of  Great 
Britain,  and,  to  a  less  degree,  of  their  kin 
this  side  the  sea. 

We  of  this  decade  belong  in  a  distinctly 
different  stage  of  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing from  that  to  which  Robertson,  Maurice, 
and  their  group  belonged.  We  have  a  vast 
accumulation  of  facts  now  well  ascertained, 
which  was  not  within  the  reach  of  those 
men,  and  which  was,  as  it  were,  only  divined 
by  them  from  afar.  We  have  in  general  a  far 
richer  archaeology  than  they  ;  in  particular, 
a  more  adequate  grasp  of  remote  history, 
and  of  the  processes  at  work  in  prehistoric 
times  ;  a  wider  acquaintance  with  religions 
and  with  race  tendencies ;  great  gains  in 
critical  knowledofe  of  how  the  Bible  came 
to  be,  and  of  Hebrew  history  ;  and,  compre- 
hensively, an  exacter  science  alike  in  regard 


Its  Htmger  after  God.  49 

to  the  forces  at  work  in  nature,  in  society, 
and  in  human  life.  All  these,  with  their 
inevitable  modification  and  enrichment  of  a 
thinking  much  cruder  then  than  now,  have 
brought  the  men  of  the  present  to  positions 
and  tendencies  in  thought  which  were  not 
to  have  been  expected  then. 

Indeed,  when  some  sense  of  all  this  comes 
in  on  the  mind  like  a  flood,  how  can  one 
repress  a  cry  to  God  that  we  may  not  be 
dull  and  unwitting,  but  may  understand 
our  time,  sympathize  with  it,  appreciate  its 
mighty  meaning,  get  at  least  a  little  way 
into  that  meaning  ourselves,  and  make  it 
potent  in  ourselves  and  in  all  about  us  ? 
But  on  the  spirit  of  those  men,  on  their 
splendid  courage,  on  their  insight  into  spir- 
itual things,  and  on  their  unshaken  resolve, 
come  what  might,  that  religion  should  lay 
hold  on  life,  —  on  these  elements  in  them 
we  have  not  advanced,  nor  shall  we  in  many 
a  day. 

It  ouofht  further  to  be  remarked  that  we 
in  America,  having  been  engaged  in  build- 
ing up  this  great  country  of  ours,  in  fighting 

4 


50         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

our  war  through,  in  grappling  with  the  ques- 
tions thence  issuing,  and  withal,  by  our  tar- 
iffs, our  trusts,  our  speculations,  and  our 
shrewdnesses,  in  getting  money  faster  than 
any  other  nation,  and  in  spending  it  faster, 
have  until  recently  stood  aside  somewhat 
provincially  from  the  great,  hard,  thorough 
religious  thinking  beyond  the  seas  ;  so  that 
such  gatherings  as  the  general  Congrega- 
tional Council  in  London  in  1891,  where 
relieious  leaders  of  the  same  communion  in 
America  meet  those  of  England  and  the 
Continent,  bring  forcibly  to  mind  the  fact 
that,  theologically,  many  of  us  need  to  set 
our  watches  considerably  ahead  in  order  to 
tell  Greenwich  time. 

Getting  and  spending  money,  if  done  in 
righteousness,  and  developing  a  great  coun- 
try such  as  ours,  are  good.  One  may,  in- 
deed, be  permitted  the  inquiry  whether  they 
are  the  highest  good,  —  whether  a  people 
may  not  be  too  rich,  and  whether  a  country 
may  not,  like  a  spindling  child,  develop 
faster  than  is  for  its  permanent  advantage. 
Certain  at  any  rate   it  is  that  our  brethren 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  5 1 

beyond  the  sea  have  surpassed  us  in  the 
getting  and  practical  expenditure  of  the 
riches  of  Godward  and  manward  thinking, 
and  in  developing  a  country  consisting,  not 
of  granite  and  of  prairie  loam,  but  of  reason- 
ableness, righteousness,  and  truth.  To  them 
we  may  well  turn  with  teachable  minds,  — 
not  necessarily  to  agree  with  them  in  all 
respects,  but  to  emulate  their  noble  studies 
and  lofty  thoughts. 

In  this  rapid  survey  of  the  way  along 
which  the  newer  relio-ious  thinkinor  of  this 
century  has  travelled  until  it  has  reached 
us,  I  hope  has  appeared,  at  least  impliedly, 
what  I  now  affirm,  that  the  persons,  known 
or  unknown,  who  have  been  most  hospitable 
to  it,  and  have  most  furthered  it,  have  been 
moved,  like  Jacob  or  Moses,  with  great  and 
earnest  hungerings  after  God.  His  true, 
real,  meaning-full  name,  his  glory  and  him- 
self, have  been  the  objects  of  their  quest. 
Not  longer  the  Holy  Grail,  but  very  God, 
has  allured  them  on. 

No  one  who  knew  Arnold  of  Rugby,  with 
whom  religion  was  the  heart  of  everything; 


52         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

or  Maurice,  whose  very  face,  manner,  and 
bearing  became  a  holy  benediction,  often 
remarked  upon  as  he  walked  the  streets ; 
or  Kingsley,  for  whom  the  whole  world  was, 
like  his  own  Chester,  God's  wonderful  cathe- 
dral, —  no  one,  I  say,  who  knew  these  men 
could  well  avoid  likening  them  to  typical 
men  in  Bible  times.  And  as  for  Robertson, 
England  has  not  seen,  nor  shall  see,  one 
hungering  more  for  God.  Such  a  tem- 
per, too,  was  in  the  Tractarian  movement. 
Newman,  as  much  as  Robertson,  sought 
God.  A  friend  of  mine  who  visited  him 
toward  the  close  of  his  life,  could  not  give 
an  account  of  the  interview  without  con- 
veying the  most  vivid  impression  of  his 
saintliness.  Such  a  temper,  differently  man- 
ifesting itself,  animiated  Wordsworth,  Ten- 
nyson, Browning.  The  Germans,  in  their 
prodigious  labors  for  a  better  religious  think- 
ing, have,  in  their  truer  representatives,  been 
devout  too.  So  have  our  own  people.  So 
has  many  a  man  outside  religious  lines,  and 
many  a  man  seemingly  outside  of  all  faith. 
It  is  right,  on  such  a  point  as  this,  that 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  53 

I  should  bear  my  personal  testimony.  If 
you  have  ever  seen  in  me  any  unselfishness, 
any  love  of  men,  any  grasp  of  affairs,  any 
public  spirit,  any  courage  of  conviction,  any 
anything  that  is  true,  then  let  me  say  to 
you  that  the  mightiest  incentive  thereto 
which  I  have  ever  known  has  been  that 
vision  of  God,  more  simply  and  as  I  believe 
more  truly  conceived  of,  which  in  an  ever- 
increasino-  des^ree  commands  me.  It  was 
so  in  the  long  ago  of  which  I  just  now 
spoke,  when  God,  through  Horace  Bushnell, 
awakened  my  soul.  It  was  so  seven  years 
since,  when,  led  as  I  believe  of  God,  I 
unfolded  to  you  my  simpler  conviction  re- 
specting our  Lord's  w^ork.^  It  is  so,  if  I 
know  my  own  heart,  as  I  speak  to  you  in 
these  discourses.  And  if  I,  who  am  so  de- 
ficient, find  God,  more  simply  thought  of,  so 
much  more  to  my  life,  and  such  a  propul- 
sion to  truer  thinking,  how  much  more  may 
we  suppose  this  to  be  true  of  the  veritable 

^  The  two  sermons,  with  some  notes  and  additional  mat- 
ter, form  the  little  book,  '*  Plain  Words  on  Our  Lord's 
Work."     Cupples,  Upham,  and  Company,  Boston.     1886. 


54         The  Newer  Religious  Thijiking. 

leaders  of  religious  thought,  the  holy  proph- 
ets and  seers  of  our  time. 

II.  If  now  I  have  succeeded  in  making 
evident,  by  way  of  narrative  and  from  indi- 
vidual illustrations,  the  fact  to  which  I  have 
also  felt  constrained  to  bear  my  personal 
testimony,  namely,  that  hunger  after  God 
actuates  the  newer  religious  thinking,  let  me 
point  out,  in  the  second  place,  and  as  com- 
pleting this  discourse,  some  ways  in  which 
this  hunger  works  practically. 

Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  in  the  sermon  preached 
in  Plymouth  Church  the  Sunday  morning 
after  Mr.  Beecher's  death,  made  this  state- 
ment :  "  When  your  pastor  preached  that 
famous  sermon  on  the  '  Background  of  Mys- 
tery,' which  created  so  much  excitement  and 
produced  so  much  criticism,  I  went  to  him 
with  the  proofs  of  it.  It  was  to  be  published 
in  '  The  Christian  Union,'  and  I  said  to  him : 
'  Mr.  Beecher,  this  sermon  you  must  revise.' 
I  think  it  was  the  only  time  I  ever  had 
a  controversy  with  Mr.  Beecher  and  came 
out  best,  but  he  yielded  that  time.  .  .  .  And 
then  I  remember  his  turning  to  me,  his  great 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  55 

form  growing  greater,  and  the  great  brow 
growing  higher,  and  his  great  eyes  flashing 
fire,  as  he  said  something  like  this  :  '  There 
are  times,  in  preaching,  when  I  have  a  con- 
ception of  the  greatness  and  the  goodness 
and  the  mercy  and  the  love  of  my  God,  and 
then  see  by  the  side  of  it  the  hideous  idols 
that  are  put  up  in  Christian  temples  and 
represented  in  Christian  literature,  that  are 
maligning  my  God  ;  and  I  hate  them,  as  the 
old  Hebrew  prophets  hated  the  idols  of  old 
time,  with  an  unutterable  hatred  ;  and  '  — 
then,  with  one  of  those  sudden  transitions, 
he  dropped  back  and  said  —  '  something  's 
got   to  give   way.' " 

In  this  connection  one  remembers  the  zeal 
of  the  old  image-breakers,  say  in  Antwerp 
Cathedral  in  the  time  of  William  the  Silent, 
or  on  many  an  occasion  in  the  life  of  Israel. 
The  image,  or  the  idol,  seemed  such  a  trav- 
esty of  God  that  the  moral  indignation  almost 
passed  bounds.  But  not  all  the  idols  are  of 
wood,  or  of  stone.  Some  of  them  are  of  the 
mind,  —  ideas,  conceptions,  doctrines.  We 
worship    sometimes    the    Bible    more    than 


56         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

the  Holy  Spirit,  speaking  within  us  as  it 
spake  to  holy  men  of  old.  We  worship 
sometimes  our  ideas  of  Christ's  work  more 
than  we  worship  Christ.  We  worship  some- 
times human  names  and  human  authority 
more    than    we   worship    the   living    God. 

Now  the  newer  religious  thinking,  under- 
standing by  the  light  of  history  when  it  was 
that  more  or  less  of  these  images  were  set 
up  (even  as  Christ  did  when  he  said,  "Moses 
for  your  hardness  of  heart  suffered  you  to  " 
do  a  certain  thing,  "  but  from  the  beginning 
it  hath  not  been  so  "),  hungers  to  such  a  de- 
gree after  God,  and  to  have  God  no  longer 
obscured  and  misrepresented  by  these  images, 
that,  like  the  old  image  or  idol  breakers, 
those  to  whom  the  clearer  vision  has  come 
cannot  but  do  what  in  them  lies  to  break  the 
idols  down.  Their  course  looks,  to  those 
not  understanding  it,  like  sacrilege.  It 
seems  inexplicable.  But  in  reality  it  is 
hunger  after  God  manifesting  itself  in  this 
form. 

May  all  such  not  feel  "  hate,"  except  in 
Mr.  Beecher's  beneficent  sense.     May   they 


Its  Hunger  after  God,  57 

have,  the  rather,  a  loving  and  pitying  spirit, 
althouQ-h  firm  and  thorousfh  in  their  work. 
And  when  it  costs  them  much,  as  many  a 
time  it  will,  may  they  have  the  spirit  of  the 
Lord  Jesus,  who  broke  down  idol  after  idol 
of  Jewish  prejudice,  but  wept  over  Jeru- 
salem, and  prayed,  "  Father,  forgive  them," 
for  those  who  avenged  the  broken  idols  by 
crucifying  him. 

What,  let  us  ask,  then,  are  some  of  the 
idols  which  the  newer  religious  thinking,  in 
this  its  hunger  after  God,  would  fain  throw 
down  ? 

I.  One  of  them  I  may  characterize  as  a 
machine  or  mechanical  conception  of  God, — 
God  as  making  the  universe  out  of  hand,  like 
a  machine ;  God  as  dwelling  apart  from  the 
universe,  as  the  makers  of  a  gigantic  ocean 
steamship,  having  built  it,  turn  it  off  to  ply 
back  and  forth  without  them  on  the  stormy 
deep ;  and  God  as  about  to  break  up  the 
universe,  very  much  as  if  it  were  only  so 
much  junk. 

Now,  that  there  are  expressions  in  the 
Bible  regarding   his   forming   the    universe. 


58         The  Newer  Religious  ThinJdng. 


doing  what  he  wishes  with  it,  and  destroying- 
it,  admits  of  no  question.  But  from  these  it 
cannot  follow  that  such  is  an  adequate  repre- 
sentation of  his  relation  to  the  universe. 
There  are  other  and  different  expressions, 
which  represent  him  as  in  his  works,  as  de- 
lighting in  them,  as  clothing  himself  with 
them.  But  the  former  type  of  representa- 
tions, and  the  natural  tendency  of  ages  pre- 
ceding this  to  look  at  matters  mechanically, 
have  brought  it  about  that  the  ordinary 
conception  of  the  relation  of  God  to  the 
universe  is  of  the  inadequate  type  which  I 
have  described. 

This  is  a  heavy  reflection  on  God.  It 
runs  counter  to  our  deepest  instincts.  It  is 
contrary  to  reason  that  so  vast,  intricate,  and 
mysterious  a  world,  so  athrill  with  thought 
and  life,  should  be  mechanical,  a  thing  thrown 
off,  a  mere  machine.  It  is  contrary,  also,  to 
the  teachings  of  science,  which  more  and 
more  are  deepening  the  mystery  of  the  uni- 
verse. It  is  opposed,  moreover,  to  the  ruling 
expressions  in  the  Bible.  Not  so  do  the 
minds  which  appear  in   the  opening  chap- 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  59 

ters  of  Genesis  conceive  of  the  world.  His 
Spirit,  as  they  suppose,  broods  it.  He  finds  it 
very  good.  Men  cannot  get  to  the  best  of  it, 
because  they  will  not  live  truly  enough,  but 
God's  angels  can.  Within  it  he  himself 
walks  in  the  cool  of  the  day.  So  reverent 
of  this  earth  are  those  far-off  men  !  Not  so, 
either,  does  Saint  Paul  conceive  of  the  world. 
"  The  invisible  things  of  him  since  the  crea- 
tion of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  per- 
ceived through  the  things  that  are  made, 
even  his  everlasting  power  and  divinity," 
exclaims  the  Apostle ;  and  he  represents  the 
universe  as  sympathetically  in  a  groaning 
and  travail  with  the  world-long  birth  of 
mental  and  spiritual  life. 

"  But,"  says  some  one,  "  a  thought  of  the 
universe  contrary  in  this  respect  to  the  tra- 
ditional one  would  issue  in  pantheism." 
Ah,  my  friend,  you  are  at  the  usual  tactics ; 
employing  deduction  from  imperfect  con- 
ceptions, instead  of  induction  from  the  fullest 
possible  data,  and  sounding  an  unwarrantable 
alarm.  Let  us  not  be  frightened  at  a  name. 
Pantheism,  by  itself,  is  inadequate   enough; 


6o         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

but  there  is  a  divine,  yes  a  Biblical  pantheism, 
—  all  things  in  God,  by  him,  through  him ; 
all  things  standing  together  in  him  ;  he  in  his 
world,  not  apart  from  it ;  his  world  uttering 
him,  expressing  him,  bodying  him  forth. 

No  epoch  since  Hebrew  and  Greek  poets 
sang,  except  that  period  \vhich  has  suc- 
ceeded, though  the  least  spiritual,  in  fasten- 
ing upon  us  a  large  part  of  our  religious 
ideas,  namely,  the  Middle  Ages,  could  have 
had  the  Bible  in  hand,  and  propounded  in 
this  respect  a  view  of  the  universe  utterly 
repugnant  to  the  spirit  of  the  Bible.  This 
mechanical  thought  of  God  in  his  relation 
to  the  world  must  go;  the  more  spiritual 
thought  of  him  as  immanent,  as  pervading 
the  world,  and  as  of  it,  though  more  than  it, 
must  come.  The  world  is  sacred.  Exist- 
ence is  divine.  There  is  nothing  in  which 
God  is  not.  Ah !  the  beauty,  the  glory,  the 
meaning,  the  comfort  herefrom  !  How  ma- 
chine-like, wdth  the  lathe-marks  still  showing, 
is   the  counter  graven   image ! 

2.  Another  idol,  or  misrepresentation  of 
God,  is  the  conception  of  him  as  mainly 
ruler. 


Its  Hunger  after  God,  6i 

He  rules,  no  doubt;  but  even  in  that 
there  is  nothing  arbitrary,  wilful,  or  absolute 
in  temper.  He  rules  by  virtue  of  righteous- 
ness and  of  love.  He  is  God  because  he  is 
good.  Moreover,  the  idea  of  him  as  ruler, 
when  most  correct,  is  only  one  of  many 
aspects  of  him.  And  yet  almost  our  whole 
theology  is  keyed  to  this  idea,  —  his  sover- 
eignty, his  laws,  his  jealousy  for  them,  his 
punishments  for  those  violating  them,  his 
wrath,  his  being  unable  to  do  this  and  that 
because  he  could  not  do  it  and  be  just, 
and  very  much  more  to  the  same  effect. 

Perhaps  you  know  a  great  and  noble  man, 
a  parent  perchance,  a  magistrate,  a  college 
president  like  Mark  Hopkins.  He  rules? 
Certainly.  But  is  not  his  ruling  the  smallest 
aspect  of  him  ?  Are  you  thinking,  any  great 
part  of  the  time,  that  such  a  one  is  a  ruler, 
—  he  being  so  much  else,  and  so  wonderfully 
so  much  else  ?  So  our  Saviour  has  not 
much  to  say  of  God  as  ruler.  He  says  some- 
thing of  that ;  but  mainly  he  speaks  of  him 
as  Father ;  as  exercising  a  providential  care 
over  even  the  hairs  of  our  heads ;  as  yearn- 


62         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

ing  for  the  prodigal's  return ;  as,  like  a  true 
shepherd,  having  more  joy  of  the  lost  sheep 
found  than  of  the  ninety  and  nine  that  went 
not  astray.  God,  to  the  Saviour's  thought, 
is  one  near  us,  with  whom  we  may  commune 
and  become  one,  far  more  than  a  ruler. 

This  primary  proposition,  then,  of  medi- 
aeval theology,  which  has  colored  nearl}^ 
every  article  of  our  creeds,  must,  I  will  not 
say  go,  for  there  is  some  truth  in  it,  but 
must  drop  to  its  subordinate  and  normal 
place,  and  yield  to  other  as  the  predomi- 
nant aspects  of  God. 

3.  Still  another  idol,  or  misrepresentation 
of  him,  is  one  which  I  hesitate  to  mention, 
because  my  meaning  may  readily  be  mis- 
understood. But  I  cannot  conscientiously 
avoid  doing  so.  I  refer  to  our  philosophy 
of  the  Trinity,  in  so  far  as  it  is  put  in  the 
place  of  God,  —  and  it  is  put  there  a  great 
deal,  as  I  cannot  help  believing. 

As  a  philosophy,  although  bunglingly  ex- 
pressing itself,  it  is  in  my  judgment  true. 
I  believe,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  reality  and 
eternity  of  those  distinctions  in  God's  being 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  6 


J 


which  the  terms  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Spirit  answer  to.  I  am,  in  short,  philosoph- 
ically a  Trinitarian  ;  and  by  this  philosophy 
I  most  readily  explain  to  myself  those  Bib- 
lical expressions, —so  that,  to  this  degree, 
I  may  add  that  I  am  Biblically  a  Trinitarian. 
Hegel's  philosophy,  unless  I  mistake,  would, 
if  it  went  so  far,  turn  out  to  be  Trini- 
tarian. Much  of  the  strongest  thinking  since 
Nicaea,  early  in  the  fourth  century,  has  been 
Trinitarian.  All  this  should  weigh  with  a 
thoughtful  person. 

But  one  must  distinguish  between  his 
theory  or  philosophy  of  certain  facts,  how- 
ever venerable  it  may  be,  and  the  facts 
themselves.  The  facts  are  there.  They 
cannot  well  be  set  aside.  But  our  philos- 
ophy of  the  facts  may  be  imperfect,  or  even 
mistaken.  God,  as  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Spirit,  is  in  the  Bible,  and  is  to  a  large 
degree  in  human  experience.  That  is  fact. 
But  our  fourtli-century  and  Hegelian  philos- 
ophy of  it  is  quite  another  thing.  It  may 
be  correct,  —  I  think  it  correct ;  but  when  I 
suppose    that  philosophy   to    compass    God, 


64         The  Newer  Religions  Thinking, 


and  when  I  make  representations  accord- 
ingly, I  attempt  to  measure  him  by  the  yard- 
stick of  Athanasius,  or  of  Hegel,  or  of  my 
own  mind;  and  therein  I  am  guilty,  very 
possibly,  of  setting  up  an  idol ;  and  all  idols 
must  come  down. 

To  the  simple  Biblical  indications,  and  to 
those  same  indications  in  human  experience, 
we  cannot  but  adhere.  But  to  a  philosophy 
of  them,  which  may  or  may  not  be  correct, 
which  certainly  is  extra-Biblical,  and  which 
has  this  ominous  fact  attending  it,  namely, 
that  there  have  always  been  devout  souls 
which  could  not  accept  it,  —  we  may  adhere 
personally,  as  I  for  one  do  ;  but  we  have  no 
right  authoritatively  to  impose  it  on  others. 
We  are,  in  other  words,  for  liberty's  sake, 
and  for  the  truth's  sake,  to  stop  representing 
that  God  is  necessarily  expressed  by  our  phi- 
losophy of  the  Trinity ;  but  are,  so  far  as  we 
touch  upon  the  subject,  to  represent  that 
God  is  God,  spoken  of  in  the  Bible  as 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit,  and  to  a 
large  degree  so  apprehended  in  human  ex- 
perience.      This    is    Biblical,    factual,    and 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  65 

enough.  What  exceeds  this  verges  toward 
image-making.  It  ought,  moreover,  —  what 
is  a  burning  shame,  —  no  longer  to  separate 
Christian  brethren. 

4.  One  more  idol,  or  misrepresentation 
of  God,  lies  in  our  too  frequent  insistence 
that  God  in  Christ  is  mainly  governmental 
or  forensic  in  his  purpose. 

Christ,  according  to  this  view,  is  almost 
entirely  compassed  by  the  idea  that  he  be- 
came man,  lived,  suffered,  and  died,  to  get 
a  law  adjustment  between  sin,  which  God 
wished  to  forgive,  and  justice  which  pre- 
vented God  from  forgiving  it. 

This  idol  was  set  up  in  the  eleventh 
century ;  for  until  that  time  the  Church 
made  Christ,  the  rather,  to  have  been  a 
negotiator  with  Satan  for  man's  escape 
from  hell.  Since  the  eleventh  century  it 
has  met  with  a  variety  of  fortunes. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  sort  of  corollary  from  the 
exaggerated  emphasis  laid  in  earlier  ages 
on  the  idea  of  God  as  ruler.  It  gets  some 
support  from  certain  passages  in  the  New 
Testament;  just  as  the  earlier  idea  of  Christ 

5 


66         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 


as  negotiating  with  Satan  gets  some  support 
from  certain  other  passages.  But  these 
passages  are  far  from  coextensive  with  the 
subject.  There  is  a  much  wider  range  of 
Bible  teaching.  And  the  facts  can  never  be 
included  under  this  category.  This  its  in- 
sufficiency was  what  compelled  that  investi- 
gation which  led  to  my  abandoning  it,  as 
intimated  a  few  moments  ago. 

Christ  is  a  vital,  living,  present  Saviour; 
not  a  law  expedient.  The  latter  interpreta- 
tion of  him  presupposes  in  God  an  attitude 
toward  sin  in  his  children  for  which,  if  you 
or  I  had  the  same  toward  sin  in  our  children, 
v/e  should  loathe  ourselves,  or  ought  to.  As 
you  know,  I  depend  wholly  on  Christ  for 
salvation,  that  is,  as  the  medium  of  spiritual 
life;  but  I  should  deny  the  truth  as  God 
gives  me  to  see  it  if  I  explained  his  work 
forensically,  and  should,  I  am  persuaded,  be 
misrepresenting  God  likewise. 

Against,  thus,  a  machine  or  mechanical 
conception  of  God ;  against  a  conception 
of  him  which  exaggerates  his  rulership  out 
of  all  proportion   to  larger  aspects  of  him ; 


Its  Hunger  after  God.  67 

against  a  conception  which  limits  the  thought 
of  him  to  a  philosophy,  approximating  the 
truth,  as  I  personally  believe,  but  which  may 
or  may  not  be  correct,  which  is  extra-Biblical, 
and  which  is  incapable  of  being  received  by 
not  a  few  devout  minds  ;  and  against  a  con- 
ception of  him  which  mainly  interprets  the 
glorious  and  life-affecting  manifestation  of 
himself  in  Christ  by  terms  better  suited  to 
the  law  courts  of  the  tyrannous  Middle  Ages, 
such  as  the  "  Merchant  of  Venice  "  brings 
before  our  minds,  than  to  this  age  or  to  the 
facts,  —  against  such  conceptions  of  God,  as 
misrepresentations  of  him,  and  as  idols  of 
the  mind,  the  newer  religious  thinking  utters 
its  protest. 

I  might  instance  others.  In  particular,  I 
should  like  to  speak  of  our  ordinary  thought 
as  not  giving  God  time  enough,  nor  scope 
enough,  to  come  down  to  now,  or  to  go  on 
from  now,  or  to  include  his  whole  great  uni- 
verse and  his  whole  great  family.  But  to  do 
this  to-night  is  impracticable.  Besides,  as 
examples,  the  idols  already  mentioned  will 
suffice. 


68         The  Newer  Religions  Thinking. 

Let  me  say,  in  closing,  that  the  "  gospel  of 
the  glory  of  the  blessed  God  "  has  been  un- 
speakably hurt  by  such  misrepresentations. 
Because  it  has  been  so  misrepresented,  mul- 
titudes have  wandered  off  into  unbelief. 
Other  multitudes  have  groped  blindly  after 
God,  with  sick  hearts.  The  enemies  of 
Christianity  have  made  the  most  of  such 
caricatures,  and  have  summarily  bowed  it 
out  of  court.  These  caricatures,  and  others 
like  them,  are  the  stock  in  trade  of  rank  and 
noisy  infidelity. 

Brethren,  the  Church,  the  clergy,  the  laity, 
in  fact  all  true  souls,  have  herein  a  heavy 
responsibility  laid  on  them.  They  are  to 
think  rightly  of  God,  and  speak  rightly,  and 
witness  by  true  lives  rightly  for  him.  God 
help  us  all  to  do  this!  May  open  eyes, 
teachable  minds,  and  receptive  hearts  be 
ours  for  that  wideness  and  richness  of  truth, 
now  discernible,  for  which  prophets,  apos- 
tles, and  Christians  from  age  to  age  waited, 
but  received  it  not,  "  God  having  provided 
some  better  thing  for  us,  that  they  without 
us  should  not  be  made  perfect  "  ! 


ITS    PASSION    FOR    MEN. 


SYNOPSIS. 

The  passion  for  men  of  Moses  and  Saint  Paul.  —  This 
characteristic  of  fresh  thinkers :  Throughout  the  Bible ; 
In  Christian  ages;  In  the  modern  time  (examples).  —  The 
connection  between  such  thinking  and  this  passion  not 
accidental  but  necessary.  —  Consequent  war  of  the  newer 
religious  thinking  on  certain  traditional  religious  ideas  in- 
consistent, as  commonly  understood,  with  an  adequate  view 
of  man,  namely :  (i)  Election  and  reprobation ;  the  self- 
sacrifice  of  the  true,  Biblical  election ;  (2)  Man's  sinful  state  ; 
only  most  figuratively  a  "  child  of  wrath  ;  "  (3)  Worthless- 
ness  of  works  when  expressive  of  character;  failure  to 
apprehend  the  struggle  of  Christ  and  the  apostles  with 
the  Jewish  spirit  underlies  this  perversion  of  Scripture ; 
(4)  Man's  access  to  God ;  this  vital,  rather  than  analogous 
to  access  to  the  Queen  of  England  ;  (5)  Man's  destiny  ;  mag- 
nitude of  this  question  ;  wanted  upon  it,  more  light,  ampler 
data,  and  its  re-study.  —  Consequent  war,  also,  of  the  newer 
religious  thinking  on  certain  ideas  and  practices  prevalent  in 
society,  namely  :  (i)  Merely  ease-producing  remedies  for 
the  evils  of  society  ;  (2)  Superficial  remedies  ;  (3)  Laissez 
/aire;  (4)  Inordinate  wealth  and  luxury;  (5)  Asceticism; 
(6)  Unscientific  living  ;  (7)  The  individualistic  tendency.  — 
"  I  will  not  cease  from  mental  fight." 


III. 

ITS   PASSION   FOR   MEN.i 

Yei  now,  if  thou  wilt  forgive  their  sin  —  /  and  if  not, 

blot  me,  I  pray  thee,  out  of  thy  book  which  thou  hast 

ivritten.  —  Exodus  xxxii.  32. 
For  I  could  ivish    that  I  myself  were  anathema  from 

Christ  for  my  breth7'en''s  sake,  my  kifismen  according 

to  the  flesh.  —  Romans  ix.  3. 

TN  these  words  two  great  typical  representa- 
tives of  newer  religious  thinking  in  their 
time  utter  the  passion  of  their  souls.     It  is 
for  men. 

Moses,  stirred  by  larger  religious  thought, 
essays  to  free  his  people.  "  Sirs,  ye  are 
brethren,"  he  pleads.  Prevented  from  ac- 
complishing his  object,  long  delayed,  but  at 
length  entering  upon  and  now  amidst  his 
great  work,  he  finds  that  his  people  cannot 
rise  to  his  spiritual  ideals,  but  revert  to  idol 
worship  and  to  gross  sensuousness.     In  such 

^  Prospect  Street,  Sunday  night,  November  20,  1892. 


72         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

a  case  they  are  repugnant  to  high  moral  law, 
and  to  God  as  conceived  of  under  the  alto- 
gether inadequate  category  of  moral  law.  In 
such  a  plight,  when  destruction  seems  await- 
ing them,  and  when  he  himself  is  tempted  to 
let  them  perish,  and  to  become  in  his  own 
person  the  founder  of  a  truer  nation,  the 
God  within  him  offsets  the  God  of  his  pre- 
conception and  pleads  for  his  people  with 
this  sublime  climax,  "  If  [thou  forgive  them] 
not,  blot  me,  I  pray  thee,  out  of  thy  book 
which  thou  hast  written." 

Similarly,  Saint  Paul,  the  great  new  re- 
ligious thinker  of  early  Christianity,  would 
desire  to  be  "  accursed,"  or  "  separated,''  or 
"  anathema,"  for  his  brethren's  sake. 

This  is  one  marked  characteristic  of  fresh- 
ening religious  thought.  It  freed  Israel  from 
Egypt.  It  rescued  her  anew  and  anew  from 
her  enemies.  It  led  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
many  of  them  heretics  in  their  day,  to  be  the 
most  democratic  of  men,  pleading  for  the  poor, 
the  oppressed,  the  outcast,  against  wealth, 
tyranny,  and  obloquy, — so  that  they  became 
the  forerunners  of  the  liberators  of  succeed- 


Its  Passion  for  Men,  73 

ing  ages,  and  by  their  utterances  (together 
with  those  of  the  Hebrew  lawgivers,  who 
were  actuated  by  the  same  spirit)  laid  as 
foundations  those  just  principles  of  human 
conduct  which  many  centuries  later  became 
the  basis  of  the  common  law,  and  which 
have  thus  come  to  obtain  for  the  modern 
world. 

Similarly,  freshening  religious  thought 
broke  into  the  petrified  tyranny  and  cruelty 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  deferred  the  over- 
throw of  that  empire  by  Christianizing  it; 
made  a  way  for  the  tentative  rise  of  free  in- 
stitutions prior  to  the  Reformation;  rendered 
possible,  coincidently  with  the  Reformation, 
far  ampler  freedom  alike  for  Protestants  and 
Catholics  ;  and  is  to-day  the  great  humaniz- 
ing factor  in  a  humanizing  tendency  which 
has  become  so  universal  that  it  characterizes 
many  even  of  those  who  deny  the  very 
grounds  for  the  existence  of  religion. 

In  the  past  century  and  a  half,  for  exam- 
ple, the  fresher  religious  thinking  under 
Edwards  prepared  the  way  for  the  indepen- 
dence of  the   American   Colonies;    and  the 


74         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

fresher  religious  thinking  of  "  Unevangeli- 
cals,"  so-called,  like  Channing  and  Parker, 
and  of  "  Evangelicals,"  so-called,  as  seen  in 
a  fresher  Andover  theology.  New  Haven 
theology,  and  New  School  Presbyterian 
theology,  prepared  the  way  for  the  over- 
throw of  American  slavery,  in  one  of  the 
most  gigantic  moral  struggles  of  history. 
So  in  the  mother  country,  Arnold,  Robert- 
son, Maurice,  and  Kingsley,  with  many 
others,  some  of  them  passed  on,  and  some 
of  them  still  living,  have  been  in  the  fore- 
front of  those  modifications  of  the  English 
Commonwealth  which  have  so  mightily 
uplifted  and  benefited  its  congested  popu- 
lations. 

And  to-day  the  men  who  are  least  satis- 
fied with  things  as  they  are ;  who  are  plung- 
ing deepest  into  social  questions ;  whose 
life-hold  on  political  economy  and  on  politics 
is  most  tenacious,  are  the  men  who  see  a 
new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  of  religious 
thought  and  feeling, — some  of  them  within 
so-called  "  evangelical  "  lines ;  some  of  them 
liberals  or  radicals  religiously  ;  and  some  of 


Its  Passion  for  Men,  75 

them  agnostics  or  unbelievers,  but  with  a 
freshened  and  changed  religious  feeling, 
whatever  their  classification.  In  fact,  the 
men  are  all  about  us,  who  conjoin  with 
fresher  and  better  thoughts  of  God  fresher 
and  better  thoughts  for  men,  —  Catholic  and 
Protestant,  "  Evangelical  "  and  "  Unevangel- 
ical,"  religious  and  (as  they  would  call  them- 
selves) non-religious,  but  in  the  range  that 
belongs  of  right  to  religion,  new  men,  in  the 
new  time-  "  Ring  out,"  they  cry,  in  the 
lines  of  Tennyson,  — 

"  Ring  out  the  feud  of  rich  and  poor, 
Ring  in  redress  to  all  mankind. 

"  Ring  out  false  pride  in  place  and  blood, 
The  civic  slander  and  the  spite  \ 
Ring  in  the  love  of  truth  and  right, 
Ring  in  the  common  love  of  good." 

The  High  Church  is  working  for  the  poor, 
and  so  is  the  Low  Church  ;  formal  Non- 
conformist, and  informal  Salvation  Army 
man.  There  are  the  Saint  Andrew's  Brother- 
hood man,  and  the  Christian  at  Work ; 
Toynbee  Hall,  and  Rivington  Street  Col- 
lege  Settlement,   and    Prospect    Union,  and 


76         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 


the  Andover  House.  Fresher  religious 
thinking,  whatever  its  type,  is  plunging  in, 
bound  to  rescue  men  ;  while  unfreshened 
religious  thought,  gathering  its  skirts  about 
it,  too  often  only  offers  a  prayer,  and 
passes  the  contribution  box.  The  voice 
of  the  latter  has  too  frequently  put  into 
polite  phrase  Cain's  question,  "  Am  I 
my  brother's  keeper?"  The  voice  of  the 
former,  with  Moses  and  Saint  Paul,  cries 
to  God  that  it  may  be  blotted  out,  or  ac- 
cursed, if  it  cannot  do  something  for  its 
erring,  sinning  brothers. 

I.  The  first  point  to  which  I  desire  to  call 
attention  in  this  matter  is  that  it  is  not  by 
accident  that  a  mighty  passion  for  men  has 
attended  the  newer  religious  thinking  in 
times  past  and  now,  but  that  there  is  a 
necessary  connection  of  cause  and  effect 
between   them. 

Religion  is  the  correlation  of  man  and  the 
Infinite.  As,  then,  men  enlarge  their  thought 
of  the  Infinite,  the  enlargement  necessarily 
goes  into  the  domain  of  man,  as  well  as  of 
God.       God    being   more   freshly,    strongly. 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  jy 

deeply  conceived  of,  man  is  by  consequence 
more  freshly,  strongly,  deeply  conceived  of. 
The  correlation  carries  them  both.  If  so 
great,  noble,  and  more  and  more  largely  con- 
ceived of  a  being  as  God  is  in  a  relation  to 
men  of  which  religion  is  the  expression,  how 
great,  noble,  and  more  and  more  largely  to  be 
conceived  of  is  man  also.  The  one  involves 
the  other.  Or,  to  express  it  more  simply: 
God,  we  will  say,  is  Father,  and  men  are  his 
children.  With  the  Father  goes  the  child. 
The  child  gains  in  nobility  from  the  Father. 
New,  fresh,  strong  thoughts  of  God,  then, 
carry  with  them  new,  fresh,  strong  thoughts 
of  men. 

Hence,  necessarily,  did  he  who  had  seen 
the  bush  burning  but  not  consumed,  and  the 
Sinai  glory  of  God,  and  he  also  who  had  been 
caught  up  into  the  third  heaven,  yearn  alike 
for  the  children  of  so  glorious  and  good  a 
God,  and  wish  to  be  blotted  out,  or  accursed, 
if  their  brethren  might  not  also  share  the 
blessing.  Or,  as  Saint  John  the  Revelator 
put  it,  reversing  the  statement,  "  He  that 
loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen, 


78         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath  not 
seen  ?  "  And  hence  necessarily  also  did 
those  newer  religious  thinkers,  the  Hebrew 
lawgivers  and  prophets,  become  the  fore- 
runners of  the  liberators  and  of  the  enlaro-ed 
laws  of  mankind. 

Hence,  too,  necessarily  did  the  newer 
Christianity  defer  the  doom  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  and,  yet  more  and  more  freshly 
conceived  of,  prepare  the  beginnings  of  lib- 
erty before  the  Reformation,  and  give  the 
same  in  larger  degree  to  Protestants  and 
Catholics  after  the  Reformation,  and  free  our 
Colonies,  and  unshackle  our  slaves,  and  make 
the  larger  liberty  of  the  England  of  to-day, 
and  spread  itself  as  a  reforming  and  human- 
izing influence,  pervasive  as  the  atmosphere, 
in  this  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  one  involves  the  other.  The  enlarging 
and  deepening  thought  of  the  correlation 
embraces  the  conception  of  man  as  well  as 
the  conception  of  God.  And  so  is  verified 
that  profound  saying  of  Saint  Paul,  "  Where 
the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty." 

II.    But,  in  the  second  place,  the  fresher 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  79 


thought  of  man,  consequent  on  the  fresher 
thought  of  God  in  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing, puts  that  thinking  at  war  not  only  with 
certain  current  ideas  of  God,  as  we  saw  in  the 
last  discourse,  but  also  with  certain  current 
ideas  of  man. 

I.  The  current  theology  regarding  man 
runs,  for  example,  among  men  a  line  of  elec- 
tion and  reprobation. 

True,  this  is  very  little  spoken  of  now; 
but  it  is  unretracted,  and  lingers  as  an  influ- 
encing element  in  men's  thinking.  Accord- 
ine  to  this  view,  the  elect  are  chosen  of  God 
for  blessing,  and  the  non-elect  for  cursing. 
In  apparent  favor  of  this  view  are  some  Bible 
expressions,  like  that  about  the  vessels  made 
by  a  potter,  some  to  honor  and  some  to  dis- 
honor. But  from  an  ampler  thought  of  God 
it  follows  that  man,  his  child,  is  not  to  be 
treated  in  that  way.  You  could  not  treat 
your  child  in  that  way  without  running 
counter  to  human  law^  and  much  more,  to 
the  law  of  God. 

That  passion  for  men  which  characterizes 
the  newer  religious  thinking  presses,  there- 


So         The  Newer  Religiotis  Thinking. 

fore,  a  more  adequate  study  of  this  doctrine 
of  election  and  reprobation.  From  this  it 
appears  that  the  doctrine,  as  presented  in  the 
Bible,  occurs  there  mainly  in  consolatory 
passages,  as  in  the  eighth  of  the  Romans, 
where  it  is  urged  for  comfort  and  reassurance 
that  God  has  chosen  the  reader,  and  is  on 
his  side.  From  this  study  it  also  appears 
that  the  chief  elect  one  in  the  Old  Testament 
is  Abraham,  chosen  that  in  him  all  nations 
might  be  blessed;  and  that  the  chief  elect 
one  in  the  New  Testament  is  the  Lord  Jesus, 
who  is  chosen  that  men  may  be  saved,  and 
all  men  drawn  to  him. 

The  elect,  in  short,  as  another  has  phrased 
it,  "  are  elect  for  the  non-elect."  Not  partial- 
ism,  but  benevolence,  self-sacrifice,  as  in  the 
case  of  Abraham  and  the  Saviour,  and  yearn- 
ing for  the  o:ood  of  all,  are  in  this  truth. 

2.  Again,  the  newer  religious  thinking 
cannot  regard  man  so  ill  as  did  the  older 
thought. 

It  thinks  as  ill  of  sin  as  ever.  Evil,  it  is 
sure,  is  evil  and  nothing  else.  But  it  con- 
ceives of  sin  more  justly.     It  considers  that 


lis  Passion  for  Men.  8i 

sin  has  come  from  outside  influences  in  part ; 
that  blindness  is  in  greater  or  less  degree  its 
cause ;  and  that  that  part  of  it  —  and  it  is 
a  large  part  —  which  is  wilful  and  designing, 
ofrows  out  of  a  mistaken  or  insufficient  idea 
of  God  and  of  right,  even  as  a  wilfully  sin- 
ning child  is  such,  generally,  through  not 
having  had  its  heart  touched  by  love  into 
nobler  and  better  things. 

Love,  the  newer  religious  thinking  knows, 
can  penetrate  the  hardest  heart,  afford  it 
vision,  stir  its  aspirations,  and  mould  it,  it 
trusts,  into  nobler  life.  Love,  in  other  words, 
changes  the  point  of  view.  What  law  can- 
not do,  a  new  spirit  called  into  exercise  can. 
Saint  Paul  has  the  philosophy  of  it :  "  The 
law  of  the  Spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  made 
me  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  of  death." 
Accordingly,  man  being  such,  and  so  redeem- 
able, the  newer  religious  thinking  realizes, 
with  Scripture,  how  much  that  is  noble  and 
lovable  resides  in  every  human  soul.  As  the 
Saviour  could  find  it,  so  this  thinking  finds 
it.  Fallen  indeed  is  man  from  the  heights 
he  might  have  attained,  of  truth,  right,  and 

6 


82         The  Newer  Religious  Tki7tking. 

love;  but  he  is  still  God's  child,  and  only  in 
a  most  figurative  and  exceptional  sense  a 
"child  of  wrath." 

In  brief,  the  newer  religious  thinking 
believes  that  man,  fallen  in  such  a  sense,  is 
still  nigh  to  God,  dear  to  him,  and  in  some 
genuine  sense  still  not  fallen,  but  true,  and 
with  something  of  God  in  him.  This  some- 
thing it  sets  itself  to  seek,  to  love,  to  develop, 
and  to  thank  God  for. 

3.  The  newer  religious  thinking  deplores 
also  the  exaggeration  of  truth  in  the  old 
doctrine  of  the  worthlessness  of  works. 

"  Not  of  works,  lest  any  man  should  boast," 
says  Saint  Paul  ;  and  his  caveat  ought  to 
explain  his  meaning.  It  is  a  Jewish  mean- 
ing. The  Jew  was  seeking  works  as  he  was 
seeking  gold,  to  be  proud  of,  and  to  felici- 
tate himself  and  indulge  himself  withal.  The 
more  gold,  the  more  pride  and  ease.  The 
more  works,  the  more  pride  and  ease  like- 
wise. Of  that  kind  of  goodness,  then,  the 
more  the  worse,  since  it  was  assumed  for 
effect,  a  mere  matter  of  boasting,  a  thing 
of  the  outside  and  not  of  the  heart.     It  was 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  83 


upon  this  false  Jewish  idea  of  righteousness 
that  Christ  and  the  apostles  flung  their  lives 
in  protest.  The  real  thing,  they  contended, 
was  utterly  other  than  this.  "  Except  your 
righteousness  shall  exceed  the  righteousness 
of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  In  no 
wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

What  a  perversion,  now.  It  Is  to  take  this 
evil,  which  was  peculiar,  in  great  measure 
local,  and  the  conspicuous  trait  of  a  deca- 
dent national  religion,  and  formulate  from 
It  the  doctrine  that  good  conduct  counts  for 
nothing!  It  counts,  being  real  and  from 
the  heart,  for  everything.  As  clothes  put 
on,  as  something  assumed,  it  Is  insincerity, 
hypocrisy,  an  object,  not  for  boasting  ("  lest 
any  man  should  boast  "),  but  for  contempt. 
But  as  a  real  thing,  as  springing  from  the 
heart,  as  an  expression  of  character,  and 
as  In  that  sense  an  embodiment  of  faith.  It 
Is  precious  alike  with  God  and  with  men. 
"  Thine  alms  are  had  in  remembrance  in 
the  sight  of  God,"  exclaims  the  angel  to 
Cornelius.  "  I  will  show  thee  my  faith  by 
mv  works,"  writes  Saint  James. 


84         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

The  newer  religious  thinking,  therefore, 
while  depending  in  all  things  on  God,  and 
while  valuing  as  beyond  price  those  Christly 
motives  which  issue  in  the  noblest  living, 
begs  leave  at  the  same  time,  as  it  thinks 
better  of  God,  so  also  to  think  better  of 
man,  God  s  child,  than  longer  to  undervalue 
or  think  lightly  of  true,  heart-inspired  good 
conduct. 

4.  Nor  can  the  newer  religious  thinking, 
though  resting  alone,  in  the  case  of  many 
of  its  representatives,  on  Christ  as  the  chan- 
nel or  medium,  realized  or  unrealized,  of 
access  to  God,  any  longer  believe  that  access 
to  God  is  exclusively,  as  a  matter  of  terms, 
through    Christ. 

God  is  too  real,  too  omnipresent,  too  imma- 
nent in  man,  for  there  to  be  any  such  literal 
mediating  as  the  old  doctrine  assumed. 
Rather,  as  many  believe,  does  God  in  Christ 
so  seek  men,  whether  they  realize  it  or  not, 
that  he  finds  them ;  and,  in  their  sincere 
response  to  his  seeking,  whatever  the  form 
of  their  response,  they  have  access  to  God. 
In  some  such  sense  as  this,  through  Christ, 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  85 

whether  known  by  them  or  not,  men  find 
God ;  but  not  necessarily  through  Christ 
outwardly,  in  terms,  and  by  way  of  formality. 
It  might  be  expressed  thus  :  Christ  is  the 
manward  side  of  God.  Through  him  access 
is  thus  had.  But  not  formally,  diplomati- 
cally, forensically,  or  even,  necessarily,  as 
matter  of  knowledge,  but  rather  vitally. 

The  newer  religious  thinking  ventures,  in 
other  words,  not  to  think  so  ill  of  man,  as 
God's  child,  as  to  suppose  that  his  access 
to  God  is  analogous  to  access  to  the  Queen 
of  England.  "  I  was  found  of  them  that 
sought  me  not,"  says  Scripture. 

5.  Once  more,  regarding  the  destiny  of 
man  as  God's  child,  the  newer  religious 
thinking  begs  leave  to  accept  no  dictum  of 
mediaeval  theology,  no  dictum  of  a  super- 
ficial interpretation  of  Scripture,  no  dictum 
not  consonant  with  the  whole  conception 
of  man  derivable  from  nature,  from  history, 
from  that  charter  of  religious  freedom,  if 
rightly  used,  the  Bible,  and  from  the  heart 
of  man  under  the  influence  of  God's  Spirit. 

Accordino^  to   the   most  conservative  sci- 


86         The  Newer  Religious  T/iinking, 

entific  estimates,  man  has  been  on  the  earth 
vastly  longer  than  six  thousand  years,  the 
period  set  by  the  old  chronology.  What 
was  he  doing  ?  What  was  God  doing  with 
him  ?  He  was  unfolding,  by  slow  degrees, 
on  both  hemispheres,  into  being  man  as  we 
know  man.  Was  God  hurling  him  into 
hell  for  that  beneficent  work,  savage  though 
he  was  ?  At  an  analogous  stage  of  unfold- 
ing are  some  peoples  now  living  on  this 
planet.  What  is  God  doing  with  them  1 
Hurling  them  into  hell  likewise  ?  Then 
should  good  men  wish,  with  Saint  Paul,  to 
be  accursed  with  them,  to  follow  them, 
love  them,  and,  if  it  might  be,  to  bring 
them  back. 

Oh  !  these  questions  pressed  on  us  by  our 
enlarging  knowledge !  What  is  the  destiny 
of  man  as  a  race  on  this  planet  ?  What  is 
the  destiny  of  man,  individually  considered, 
after  leaving  this  planet  ?  We  can  neither, 
on  the  one  hand,  answer  these  questions 
with  a  benevolent  optimism,  hoping  for  the 
best,  —  because,  unfortunately,  there  is  much 
in    the    survey    which   looks    by    no    means 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  '^'] 

toward  the  best,  but  toward  the  worst,  —  nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  with  the  theologians  of 
an  age  which,  for  frequent  offences,  burnt 
people,  flayed  them  alive,  and  tortured  them, 
can  we  hasten  to  remand  them  to  hell 
torments. 

What  we  want,  on  this  subject,  is  more 
light,  a  re-study  of  the  whole  matter,  ampler 
data  and  more  comprehensive  generalization. 
Many  are  now  engaged  in  this.  For  myself, 
while  this  pursuit  is  outside  the  range  of  my 
own  special  studies,  I  frankly  confess  that  I 
am  unable  to  resist  the  hope  that  God's  love 
will  yet  find  all  souls ;  nor  the  hope  that, 
here  and  hereafter,  I,  in  common  with  all 
who  love  him,  may  be  used  as  a  means  for 
his  love  to  find  all  souls.  But  neither  can  I 
resist  the  impression  that  it  may  be  possible 
for  a  soul  always  to  withstand  God's  love.  I 
cannot,  consequently,  be  a  Universalist  in 
doctrine.  At  the  same  time  my  hope  for 
the  future  of  every  spirit  that  God  ever 
created  is  as  infinite  as  God  is  infinite. 

Of  the  newer  religious  thinking,  then,  I 
may  summarily  state,  that   it  is  devoutly  re- 


88         The  Newer  Religiotis  Thinking. 

studying  this  whole  subject,  impelled  thereto 
by  that  larger  thought  of  man  which  the 
larger  thought  of  God  necessitates;  and  that, 
while  it  is  teachable,  and  feels  that  it  has 
much  to  learn,  it  is  at  the  same  time  at  war 
with  ideas  on  this  subject,  long  prevalent,  in- 
deed, but  alike  dishonoring  to  God  and  man. 

Thus  in  respect  to  the  doctrine  of  election, 
of  man's  sinful  state,  of  conduct  when  expres- 
sive of  character,  of  man's  access  to  God,  and 
of  man's  destiny,  not  to  mention  others,  the 
newer  religious  thinking  is  at  war  with  the 
hard  and  fast  conclusions  of  an  earlier  theo- 
logy; and,  while  it  recognizes  much  truth  in 
the  old  positions,  and  in  respect  to  them, 
rightly  apprehended,  is  not  destructive  but 
constructive,  it  claims  at  the  same  time  the 
right  to  re-study  them,  and  more  justly, 
reasonably,  and  honorably  alike  to  God  and 
man,  to  interpret  them  afresh. 

III.  In  conclusion  I  can  state  hardly 
more  than  in  propositions  some  particulars 
in  which  the  newer  religious  thinking,  be- 
cause of  its  passion  for  men,  is  at  war  with 
society,  cries  aloud,  and  spares  not. 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  89 

1.  The  newer  religious  thinking  does  not 
believe  that  man  lives  by  bread  alone. 

Any  proposed  renovation  of  society,  there- 
fore, by  contrivances,  like  Mr.  Bellamy's,  to 
take  the  hardness  out  of  life,  to  make  every- 
thing easy,  to  have  done  with  the  struggle, 
to  have  reconstructed  society  into  an  organ- 
ism working  with  precision  like  a  factory,  is, 
in  its  judgment,  like  the  holiness  scheme  in 
religion,  while  w^orthy  in  more  or  less  re- 
spects, substantially  a  device  to  construct 
moral  weaklings.  Not  what  we  have  en- 
joyed, but  what  we  have  suffered,  —  even  as 
One  of  old  was  made  "  perfect  through  suf- 
ferings,"—  has  probably  most  benefited  you 
and  me. 

The  remedy  must  not  involve  the  sacrifice 
of  anything  truly  educational,  tonic,  and 
character-affecting  in  the  present  order. 

2.  Similarly,  the  newer  religious  thinking 
is  shy  of  any  proposed  remedies  for  the  evils 
of  mankind  which  ignore  the  very  great 
complexities  of  the  problem. 

The  problem  is  vast.  The  wisest  knows 
little  about  it.     Man  and  man's  good,  which 


90         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

unnumbered  ages  have  only  brought  to  the 
present  stage,  are  too  nearly  infinite,  having 
an  infinite  parentage,  and  are  too  Httle  as  yet 
within  the  range  of  our  comprehension,  to 
be  fathomed  in  a  day,  a  year,  a  century,  or 
an  epoch.  That  is  one  of  the  mighty 
teachings  of  the  "Idyls  of  the  King":  — 

"  And  slowly  answered  Arthur  from  the  barge  : 
'  The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways, 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world.'  " 

The  newer  religious  thinking,  therefore, 
is  lowly,  cautious,  tentative,  teachable,  recep- 
tive in  these  matters. 

3.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  so 
very  meek  after  all.  It  has  declared  war  on 
some  things,  and  will  not  capitulate.  One 
of  them  is  laissez  faire. 

Every  man  for  himself  and  the  devil  take 
the  hindmost  is  not  its  doctrine.  The 
older  thinking  might  live  along  with  such  a 
theory,  having,  under  its  category  of  justice, 
done  no  wrong;  but  the  newer  thinking  can- 
not abide  it.  Let  it,  on  the  contrary,  go  to  the 
devil  with  the  hindmost,  and  be  blotted  out 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  91 

or  accursed  with  the  same,  rather  than  en- 
counter the  self-condemnation  of  having  had 
no  pity  on  the  hindmost,  and  of  letting  him 
go  to  the  devil  with  none  to  help. 

It  believes  that  capital  has  rights ;  also, 
that  labor  has  rights.  The  indifference  of 
capital  to  labor,  in  multitudes  of  cases,  it 
believes  to  be  as  wrong  in  principle  as  the 
indifference  of  labor  to  capital  when  it  sets 
costly  buildings  on  fire.  When  labor  destroys 
capital  it  does  a  great  wrong,  for  which  it 
should  suffer  the  severe  penalties  of  the 
law.  But  it  only  does,  bluntly  and  out  and 
out,  against  capital  what  capital,  by  indirect 
and  legal  methods  and  by  indifference,  fre- 
quently does  against  labor,  impoverishing  it, 
crushing  it,  —  yes,  and  through  want  and 
misery  often  slaying  it.  The  murders 
wTOught,  all  legally  by  capital,  will,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  just  Judge,  far  outnumber  the 
murders  by  riot  and  violence  which  labor 
has  committed  ;  and  every  one  of  them  will 
be  wicked  in  the  eyes  of  that  Judge. 

The  destruction  of  New  York  Central 
property   at    Buffalo    last  summer  by  labor, 


92         The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

and  particularly  the  interruption  of  travel 
over  a  highway  of  national  importance,  are 
to  me  simply  abominable.  But  so  to  me 
also  is  that  vast  railway  system  simply  abom- 
inable. Grind  the  poor,  proceed  by  laissez 
fairc,  let  Gods  child,  3^our  brother,  sink 
whither  the  miner  under  the  coal  combina- 
tion, and  the  over-w^orked  railway  employee 
under  the  railroad  monopoly  sink,  and  con- 
demn them  for  fire  and  bloodshed }  Yes. 
And  if  necessary,  shoot  them  or  hang  them. 
Before  God,  they  deserve  it.  But  you, 
ye  rich  men,  ye  mighty  combinations  of 
moneyed  tyranny,  proceeding  all  legally, 
as  our  statute  books  allow,  to  oppress  the 
poor,  —  ye,  too,  are  guilty,  sinning,  more- 
over, under  great  light,  great  opportunity, 
and  great  self-aggrandizement.  "  He  that 
is  without  sin  among  you,  let  him  first 
cast  a  stone."  ^ 

1  What  is  here  said  regarding  capital  and  labor  needs 
amplification.  The  spirit  of  such  amplification  would  be 
understood  by  those  who  heard  me.  For  the  reader,  I 
add:  — 

(i)  The  corporation  referred  to  is  not  a  sinner  above 
many  others.     Nor  is   it,  in  common  with  many  others,  at 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  93 

4.  The  newer  religious  thinking  is  also 
at  war  with  the  inordinate  getting  of  wealth, 
and  the  luxurious  enjoyment  of  it. 

Wealth  is  good,  gotten  within  bounds, 
rightly  acquired,  and  rightly  used  ;  but  to  get 
it  beyond  bounds,  to  acquire  it  by  question- 
able methods,  and  in  any  case  self-indulgently 
to  roll  in  its  luxury, —  this  is  to  sin  against 
what  wealth  means,  namely,  untold  toil,  sweat, 
and  often  blood ;  and  it  is  to  sin  against  the 
millions  who  are  either  starving,  or  know 
not  whither  to  look  for  the  next  meal. 

fault  throughout,  for  it  is  lacking  neither  in  commendable 
points  of  administration,  nor  in  admirable  managers. 

(2)  On  the  other  hand,  as  regards  organized  labor, 
exigencies  might  arise  where  violence  on  its  part  would  be 
justifiable.  The  tenet  of  non-resistance  is  hardly  of  univer- 
sal application. 

(3)  Having  said  thus  much  in  qualification  of  the  vigor- 
ous language  used  above,  I  reaffirm  it  in  the  spirit  in  which 
I  intended  it,  and  as  vehemently.  For,  in  this  age  of  the 
world,  and  in  the  light,  I  will  not  say  of  the  Gospel,  but  of 
those  economic  principles  with  which  the  Gospel  is  replete, 
capital  has  no  right,  as  a  matter  of  economics,  other  than  to 
work  intelligently,  obviously,  and  devotedly  for  the  good  of 
labor ;  and  a  reciprocal  obligation,  on  the  same  grounds,  is 
laid  upon  labor.  Without  their  marriage  the  world  cannot 
go  forward.  The  household  which  they  constitute  has  no 
right  to  be  divided  against  itself.  "  No  man  ever  yet  hated 
his  own  flesh." 


94         The  Neiver  Religious  Thinking. 

And  that  is  what  this  land  is  doing,  — 
having  the  most  favorable  country  and  gov- 
ernment in  the  world,  yet  stretching  every 
nerve  to  outdo  the  other  nations,  to  see  that 
the  products  of  the  skill  of  the  poor  laborers 
of  other  lands  shall  not  come  hither,  and  to 
get,  get,  get,  and  keep,  keep,  keep,  adding 
field  to  field,  property  to  property,  trust  to 
trust,  monopoly  to  monopoly,  —  while  the 
poor  man  grows  poorer,  and  it  is  harder  and 
yet  harder  to  get  on,  and  the  wretched  vic- 
tims of  such  a  spirit  blaspheme  the  God 
whom  extortioners,  in  too  many  instances, 
profess  to  worship  in  gilded  temples  dedi- 
cated to  his  name.  Of  this  there  will  be  an 
end  and  a  judgment. 

5.  It  is  only  just  to  say  that,  as  the  newer 
religious  thinking  is  at  war  with  luxury,  it  is 
also  at  war  with  asceticism. 

Asceticism  is  a  running  away  from  manful 
moral  conflict.  It  is  bad  for  the  body,  which 
is  made  for  right  joys.  It  is  bad  for  the 
mind,  which  needs  relaxation.  It  issues 
often  in  calamity  to  the  spiritual  nature. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  as  a  discipline ;  for  this 


Its  Passion  for  Men.  95 

world    is    liard     enough    at    best,    has    pain 
enough,  heart-ache  enough,  trouble  enough. 

The  right  and  pure  use  of  every  good  gift 
of  God,  and  the  real  self-denial  involved  in 
unselfishness,  nobility  of  character,  and  brav- 
est, truest  thought,  —  these  should  take  the 
place  so  long  usurped  by  the  artificial  self- 
denial  and  discipline  of  asceticism. 

6.  The  newer  religious  thinking,  too,  is  at 
war  with  unscientific  living. 

In  the  rich  this  brings  pampering,  and  too 
great  comfort,  and  the  limiting  of  families, 
and  presently  deterioration.  And  in  the 
poor  this  leads  to  conditions  utterly  un- 
healthful,  wasteful,  and  often  fatal. 

To  regard  the  human  body,  mind,  and 
spirit,  and  to  regard  the  environment  and 
conditions  of  life  of  these,  as  a  manifestation 
of  a  divine  wisdom,  and  discreetly  and  intel- 
ligently, or,  in  one  word,  scientifically,  to  use 
them,  —  this  is  duty;  and  the  contrary,  how- 
ever well-meaning  it  may  be,  is  sin. 

7.  To  name  only  one  other  point,  the 
newer  relio-ious  thinkinsf  is  at  war  with  the 
individualistic  tendency. 


g6         The  Newer  Religions  Thinking. 

It  was,  I  think,  Maurice,  who  said,  at  the 
time  of  Wordsworth's  death,  that  he  w^as 
the  last  great  man  of  the  age  that  was  pass- 
ing away,  —  the  age  of  individualizing,  intro- 
spection, and  self-elaborating,  however  well 
meant,  as  in  Wordsworth's  case,  these  might 
be.  And  he  was  right,  and  wrong:  right  in 
that  with  more  recent  great  men  the  drift  is 
in  the  other  direction,  as  it  is  with  the  time 
itself ;  and  yet  wTong,  for  the  tendency, 
often    indeed    beautiful,   lives    on    still. 

The  newer  religious  thinking  reveres  the 
individual,  wishes  it  all  most  harmonious 
development,  but  knows  w^ell  that  there  is 
only  one  law  of  life  in  this  respect ;  namely, 
"  None  of  us  liveth  to  himself,  and  none 
dieth  to  himself."  Only  in  realizing  and 
fulfilling  this  law,  in  merging  one's  life  into 
the  lives  of  others,  and  into,  as  it  were,  the 
corporate  life  of  the  community,  the  State, 
and  the  age,  can  one  individually  come  to 
the  most,  or  be  the  most  for  others.  "  He 
that  is  greatest  among  you  shall  be  your 
servant." 

Thus  in  putting  little  faith  either  in  ease- 


Its  Passion  for  Men,  97 

producing,  or  in  superficial  remedies  for 
the  evils  of  society ;  and  in  withstanding 
laissez  faire,  inordinate  wealth  and  luxury, 
asceticism,  unscientific  living,  and  the  indi- 
vidualistic tendency,  not  to  mention  other 
particulars,  the  newer  religious  thinking  is  at 
mental  war  with  society.  It  makes  its  own 
the  sentiment  of  one  of  this  temper  beyond 
the    seas : — 

''  I  will  not  cease  from  mental  fight, 

Nor  shall  my  sword  sleep  in  my  hand, 
Till  we  have  built  Jerusalem 

In  England's  green  and  pleasant  land." 


Where'' er  a  hu7nan  heart  doth  wear 
Joy's  tnyrtle-ivreath  or  sorrow's  gyveSy 
Where'er  a  human  spirit  strives 

After  a  life  more  true  and  fair, 

There  is  the  true  ma7i's  birthplace  grand^ 

His  is  a  world-wide  fatherland ! 

Where'' er  a  single  slave  doth  pine, 

Where'' er  one  man  may  help  another,  — 
Thank  God  for  such  a  birthright,  brother,  — 

That  spot  of  earth  is  thine  and  mine  / 

There  is  the  true  7nan''s  birthplace  grand. 

His  is  a  world-wide  fatherland  ! 

James  Russell  Lowell. 


ITS   THOUGHT   OF   NATURE,  HISTORY, 
LIFE. 


SYNOPSIS. 

Threefold  category  of  the  world,  as  Nature,  History,  and 
Life.  —  These  a  means  of  perceiving  "  the  invisible  things 
of  him."  —  The  newer  religious  thinking  called  to  confront, 
not  only  truth  as  manifested  in  the  Bible,  but  truth  as  mani- 
fested in  these.  —  It  must  listen  to  the  whole  oracle,  to  the 
whole  truth,  not  to  a  part  of  it.  —  This  solemn  and  momen- 
tous, (i)  As  counter  to  tradition,  and  therefore  sure  to 
meet  with  opposition,  working  various  ills,  but  particularly 
within  a  man ;  (2)  As  tentative,  therefore  liable  to  err,  and 
that  in  matters  of  the  utmost  moment ;  (3)  In  view  of  the 
high  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  which  it  requires.  —  But  it 
has  received  its  call  and  must  obey.  —  Sympathy,  love,  prayer, 
fitter  to  be  given  it  than  revihng.  —  Its  reverence  for  the 
world  under  this  threefold  category.  —  Bible  in  hand,  it  will 
listen  thereto,  compare,  learn,  and  derive,  no  matter  by  how 
slow  processes,  the  ampler,  better  balanced,  more  rational, 
more  heart-affecting  truth.  —  The  Bible  enjoins  this ;  its  an- 
swer to  the  question,  Whither  is  all  this  tending  ?  —  Attitude, 
in  particular,  of  the  newer  religious  thinking  toward,  (i)  The 
widening  apprehension  of  the  boundaries  of  space  and  time  ; 
(2)  The  widening  thought  of  how  life  and  how  man  came  to 
be ;  (3)  Other  studies,  especially  those  of  force  and  psychic 
energy;  (4)  The  means,  now  at  hand,  for  approximating 
accurate  historical  knowledge ;  thus  {a)  What  impelled  the 
great  migrations  ?  What  are  the  race  impulses,  Semitic, 
Latin,  Germanic,  Celtic,  etc.  ?  and  {b)  What  testimony  for 
the  world  has  all  truly  creative  literature  .?  (5)  Life  ;  this  last 
the  ultimate,  the  test.  —  "  I  came  that  they  may  have  life." 


IV. 


ITS    THOUGHT    OF    NATURE,    HISTORY, 
LIFE.i 

The  invisible  things  of  him  since  the  creation  of  the  world 
are  clearly  seen,  being  perceived  through  the  things  that 
are  made.  —  Romans  i.  20. 

n^HERE  lies  all  about  us  a  threefold, 
■^  wonderful  world.  In  its  first  aspect, 
it  is  the  world  itself,  with  its  surrounding, 
shining  worlds,  with  its  infinite  vast  of  space, 
with  its  cloud-banks  of  stars,  with  its  awe- 
full  distances  and  silences.  These  speak 
to  the  soul  of  man  with  a  voice  fuller  of 
meaning  than  any  articulate  speech.  They 
are  the  ground  facts  of  our  being.  They 
are  the  background  and  foreground  of  exist- 
ence.    In  the  words  of  a  poet  of  old  :  — 

"  There  is  no  speech  nor  language  ; 
Their  voice  cannot  be  heard. 
Their  line  is  gone  out  through  all  the  earth, 
And  their  words  to  the  end  of  the  world." 

1  Prospect  Street,  Sunday  night,  November  27,  1892. 


I02       The  Newer  Religiotis  Thinking. 

But  this  is  only  the  first  aspect.  The 
thoughts  which  you  and  I  have  had  of  the 
world,  others  have  had  before  us,  and  others 
will  have  after  us.  The  universe  is  such 
that  it  begets  thought,  feeling,  impulse,  ac- 
tion, the  ongoing  of  events,  the  march  of 
history.  The  most  interesting  thing  about 
the  sun  is  not  the  sun  itself,  nor  its  light 
and  warmth,  but  how  it  affects  the  men  who 
behold  it.  The  most  interesting  thing  about 
the  stars  is  not  their  distance,  their  splendor, 
their  value  to  navigation,  their  place  in  the 
nautical  almanac,  but  how  they  stir  thought. 
A  mountain,  a  sea  view,  a  winding  river,  a 
brook  sparkling  and  laughing  through  for- 
est and  meadow,  the  glory  of  a  peaceful 
sunset,  all  red,  and  golden,  and  purple,  and  am- 
ber, the  grandeur  of  dark,  frowning  clouds, 
of  forked  lightning,  and  of  deafening  and 
blinding  tempest,  —  these  are  not  so  fine  as 
the  emotions  which  they  awaken  in  the 
soul,  as  the  impulses  which  they  impart  to 
men,  and  as  their  formative  influence  on 
individuals  and  on  peoples.  What  adds  an 
inexpressible  tenderness  to  sea-bordered  Ayr- 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life,     103 

shire,  to  the  mountains  and  tarns  of  Cum- 
berland and  Westmorland,  and  to  the  weird 
Scottish  border,  is  the  fact  that  here  were 
born,  and  here  were  developed,  men  who 
helped  restore  thinking  peoples,  warped  off 
in  other  directions,  to  a  normal  attitude  of 
expectancy  and  teachableness  toward  the 
influences  of  the  world  about  them.  Burns, 
as  another  has  said,  "  the  greatest  lyrist 
since  Pindar,"  Wordsworth,  the  high  priest 
of  this  reverence  for  nature,  and  others 
who  moved  with  them,  wrought  this  for  the 
modern  time. 

We  have,  thus,  nature  itself ;  and  then  the 
thinking  and  conduct  of  men,  nature-im- 
pelled, as  they  have  come  down  through 
time,  —  that  is  to  say,  we  have  history. 
But  there  is  yet  a  third  aspect  of  the 
world  ;  not  it  itself,  nor  its  unfolding  pro- 
cess through  men,  but  present  and  now, 
throbbing  and  responsive,  yearning,  hunger- 
ing, aspiring,  full  of  fresh  traits,  new  differ- 
entiations, and  still  awaking  powers,  —  the 
life  of  the  world.  This  is  the  newest  thing, 
newer  this  year  than  last  year,  this  Sunday 


I04       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

than  last  Sunday,  this  moment  than  the  last 
moment,  —  life.  Life  is  more  than  nature  ; 
rather,  it  is  nature  breathing,  feeling,  think- 
ing, doing.  And  life  is  more  than  history ; 
rather,  it  is  history  brought  down  to  date, 
and  in  process  of  making.  And  nature,  his- 
tory, life,  are  the  threefold,  meaningful  sub- 
stance of  the  world ;  so  that  when  the 
Apostle  states  for  us  our  principle,  saying, 
"  The  invisible  things  of  him  since  the  cre- 
ation of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being 
perceived  through  the  things  that  are  made," 
he  means  more  than  the  world  itself,  or 
nature ;  for  with  nature,  and  inseparable 
from  it,  is  what  nature  comes  to,  namely, 
the  march  of  events  or  history ;  and  with 
nature  and  history,  and  inseparable  from 
themx,  is  what  we  may  call  nature  alive,  or 
history  brought  down  to  date,  namely,  life. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that  nature,  history, 
and  life  are  the  world  expressed  in  adequate 
terms  ;  and  it  is  these  which,  as  the  Apostle 
declares,  manifest  forth,  as  things  made 
since  the  creation  of  the  world,  the  invis- 
ible thincrs  of  God,  — that  is,  his  thoughts, 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     105 

feelings,  purposes,  character,  "  even,"  as  the 
Apostle  adds,  "  his  everlasting  power  and 
divinity." 

Now  the  solemn  and  momentous  fact 
about  the  newer  religious  thinking  is  that 
it  deems  itself  charged,  as  the  newer  re- 
ligious thinking  of  no  preceding  period  has 
deemed  itself  charged,  with  the  responsibility 
of  confronting  not  only  truth  as  manifested 
in  the  Bible,  but  truth  as  manifested  in  na- 
ture, history,  and  life. 

It  is  sure  that  truth  is  truth ;  that  there  is 
no  schism  in  it ;  that  it  matches  all  around ; 
that  there  can  be  no  authority,  even  in  the 
Bible,  to  contravene  the  authority  of  God's 
manifestation  of  himself  in  the  world.  As 
the  prophet  who  felt  himself  impelled  by  a 
divine  command  to  return  at  once  out  of 
Israel  after  delivering  his  prophecy,  is  rep- 
resented to  have  lost  his  life  because  he 
credited  a  contradiction  of  the  divine  com- 
mand uttered  to  him  by  a  brother  prophet, 
then  lying,  and  tarried ;  and  as  the  Saviour 
rescued  from  the  divine  authority  of  Moses 
the     diviner    authority    of     nature,    saying, 


io6       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

"  Moses  for  your  hardness  of  heart  suffered 
you  to  put  away  your  wives  :  but  from  the 
beginning  it  hath  not  been  so,"  —  similarly, 
in  principle,  does  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing feel  called  upon  to  listen  to  the  whole 
oracle,  not  to  a  part  of  it ;  to  the  whole  truth, 
not  to  a  part  of  it ;  to  the  Book  of  Nature  as 
well  as  to  the  Book  of  Grace ;  to  the  whole 
history  of  man  as  well  as  to  the  history  of 
Israel ;  to  the  present  life  of  the  world  as 
well  as  to  that  life  as  it  inspired  prophets 
and  apostles  ;  and  to  interpret  them  respec- 
tively in  their  blended  light. 

Of  the  Book  of  Grace,  of  the  history  of 
Israel,  and  of  the  inspired  life  of  prophets 
and  apostles,  I  shall  speak  next  Sunday 
night.  Of  the  Book  of  Nature,  of  the  whole 
history  of  man,  and  of  the  present  life  of  the 
world,  as  they  lie  before  the  newer  religious 
thinking,  I  am  to  speak  this  evening. 

I.  Let  me  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  this 
duty  of  listening  to  the  whole  oracle  and  of 
hearing  the  whole  truth,  which  I  have  char- 
acterized as  solemn  and  momentous,  is  so 
for   several   reasons. 


Its  Thought  of  Nature  E'istory,  Life,     107 

I.  One  of  them  is  that  it  runs  counter  to 
the  traditions  of  many  centuries.  Galileo 
suffered  for  affirming  planetary  revolutions. 
Copernicus  dared  not  print  his  astronomy 
until  about  to  die.  Both  were  deemed  guilty 
because  they  would  hear  the  whole  truth  in 
their  lines  of  research,  not  a  part  of  it.  One 
has  only  to  keep  his  eyes  open  as  he  scans 
the  papers,  and  his  ears  alert  as  he  walks 
the  earth,  to  learn  that  a  like  guilt  is  still 
adjudged  the  men  who  will  hear  the  whole 
truth. 

It  is  solemn  and  momentous  to  take  such 
a  step.  Not  only  is  it  not  pleasant,  but  it 
limits  one's  usefulness.  It  keeps  a  man  in 
America,  who  ought  to  be  a  foreign  mis- 
sionary, —  even  as  I,  this  week,  have  received 
a  letter  from  the  mother  of  such  a  one, 
rejected,  though  from  a  conservative  point  of 
view  worthy  to  go,  and  though  his  mother, 
herself  an  indefatigable  worker  for  foreign 
missions  for  many  years,  wished  to  give  him, 
her  only  son,  to  the  work ;  the  ground  of 
rejection  being  technically  of  another  sort, 
but  having  an  inseparable    connection  with 


io8       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

the  purpose  to  hold  back  men  of  the  newer 
thinking  from  the  Christly  work  of  bringing 
the  "  Good  News  "  to  the  heathen. 

It  renders  a  man  working  at  home  the 
object  not  only  of  ill  speech,  but  of  vague 
suspicion  and  more  or  less  general  distrust. 

What  is  far  worse,  such  is  psychic  action 
that  the  person  thus  limited  and  hindered,  if 
not  well  balanced,  is  apt  to  be  impelled  to 
greater  lengths  of  opinion  than  would  nor- 
mally be  the  case,  even  as  persecution  begets 
fanaticism  in  those  capable  of  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  person  is  well-balanced,  so 
that  he  keeps  a  poise  and  symmetry  of 
opinion,  he  is  apt  to  be  depressed  in  spirit, 
and  not  to  develop  joyously  in  his  work,  as 
ought  to  be  the  case  in  order  to  a  man's  best 
serviceableness. 

In  short,  not  only  the  guilt  judged  upon 
those  who  dare  to  hear  the  whole  oracle,  and 
listen  to  the  whole  truth,  but  the  unfortunate 
consequences  of  it  outwardly  in  limitation  of 
work  and  restriction  of  influence,  and  in- 
wardly in  its  psychic  effect,  render  this  duty 
of  the  newer  religious  thinking  solemn  and 
momentous. 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life,     109 

2.  Another  consideration  in  the  same 
direction  is  the  tentative  nature  of  these  new 
interrogations  of  truth. 

We  are  only  in  the  beginnings  of  our 
ampler  knowledge  of  nature,  of  history,  and  of 
life,  and  there  is  large  consequent  liability  to 
mistake  as  we  study  them.  So,  too,  the 
relative  weight,  or  the  correlation,  of  the  two 
lines  of  truth  is  a  tentative  science,  liable  to 
error.  Great,  moreover,  must  needs  be  the 
ill-consequences  of  mistakes  in  matters  of  so 
grave  a  nature.  One  breaks  new  ground, 
sails  a  sea  not  yet  duly  provided  with  charts, 
may  readily  err,  and  finds  himself  conse- 
quently in  tremendously  serious  business 
from  this  point  of  view. 

3.  It  is  tremendously  serious  business, 
also,  in  view  of  those  prodigious  studies,  of 
that  careful  and  unbiassed  thinking,  of  that 
courage  and  persistence,  of  that  tact  and 
fearlessness,  of  that  thoroughness,  and  of  that 
combined  mental  coolness  and  heart  warmth, 
all  of  which  are  required  of  the  newer  reli- 
gious thinking  in  this  aspect  of  the  case. 

How  little  do   those  who  lightly  animad- 


1 1  o       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

n 

vert  upon  the  consecrated  Christian  scholars 

engaged  in  various  departments  of  this  one 
general  work  realize  what  qualities  must  be 
in  these  men  to  start  with ;  what  toils,  what 
stresses  of  mind,  and  what  fortitude  amidst 
evil  report,  must  be  constantly  exercised  by 
them  ;  and  how  they  are,  in  this  respect,  like 
those  who  through  much  pain,  loss,  and 
opprobrium  have  won  for  the  world  some 
of  its  most  precious  discoveries,  and  most 
gracious  emancipations  !  What  an  awaking 
by  and  by  it  will  be  for  the  maligners  of  such 
men  to  find  that,  as  their  fathers  slew  many 
a  prophet,  they  have  practically  been  doing 
the  same  thing  to  these !  May  they  be 
accorded  greater  mercy  then  than  their  es- 
chatology  allows ! 

But  there  is  only  one  thing  for  the  newer 
religious  thinking  to  do.  It  has  received 
its  call.  It  must  obey.  Counting  no  cost, 
shrinking  from  no  peril,  dismayed  by  no  ar- 
duousness  of  the  task,  it  must  gird  up  its 
loins  and  march  out  into  the  untried.  To  the 
struggling  present,  to  the  unborn  future,  to 
the  God   after  whom  it  hungers,  to  the  men, 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  L  ife,     1 1 1 

his  children,  who  are  the  objects  of  its  holy 
passion,  it  must  not  be  found  wanting. 
Think  of  it,  friends,  as  it  prosecutes  its  task, 
not  with  ill  will  against  it  as  destructive  ;  not 
with  uncharitable  thoughts  of  it,  as  if  it  were 
wilful,  wayward,  and  going  forward  for  the 
pleasure  of  it;  but  rather,  with  thoughts  of 
sympathy  and  of  love,  as  for  that  which  is 
called  to  solemn,  momentous,  character-test- 
ing responsibility,  and  is  seeking  to  discharge 
that  responsibility,  in  the  fear  of  God.  Such 
it  is.  Let  us  treat  it  accordingly.  May  it  be 
in  our  prayers.     May  God  bless  it ! 

II.  Let  me  say,  in  the  second  place,  with 
regard  to  the  world  as  comprehended  under 
the  categories  of  nature,  history,  and  life,  that 
the  newer  religious  thinking  faces  it  with 
reverence  and  expectation.  Here  are  the 
facts.  Here  are  the  data.  It  is  of  God  as 
related  to  these  that  the  Bible  speaks.  It  is 
of  these  as  related  to  God  that  the  world 
speaks.  The  two  are  one  book ;  each  is 
key  to  the  other ;  each  is  supplemental  to 
the  other;  each  interprets  the  other. 

What  nature   is,  how  it  unfolds,  what  its 


1 1 2       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

types  are,  what  its  spirit  is,  whence  it  origi- 
nates, whither  it  tends,  —  these  are  questions 
best  answered  by  interrogating  nature  itself. 
It  has  a  right  to  testify  in  its  own  behalf. 

Similarly  of  the  progress  of  events,  or  of 
history.  When  did  man  appear  on  the 
earth,  where,  and  under  what  conditions } 
How  did  he  unfold }  Was  his  oris^inal  con- 
dition  that  of  infantile  innocence,  followed 
by  a  great  catastrophe  of  his  moral  nature; 
or  is  the  Genesis  account  of  this  matter  a 
spiritualized  representation  of  crises  in  the 
individual  life  1  How  did  institutions  origi- 
nate.^ Was  the  order  patriarchal,  then  .the- 
ocratic, then  despotic,  then  individualizing, 
or  what  was  the  order  ?  Was  Israel  first 
under  priests  and  then  under  prophets,  or 
vice  versa?  In  short,  of  men,  of  nations,  of 
tendencies,  what  are  the  facts  1  And  on  the 
facts  what  light  does  the  Bible  throw  1  And 
on  the  Bible  what  light  do  the  facts  throw } 
All  these  are  parts  of  a  whole.  What  is  the 
whole  }     And  what  does  it  testify  to  us .? 

Similarly  of  life  now.  What  is  this  great 
load  of  it  which  the    globe   is  carrying .?  — 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     1 1 3 

the  blubber-eating,  ice-hut-inhabiting  Esqui- 
maux, the  degraded  cannibals,  the  sombre 
masses  of  semicivilized  nations,  the  throng- 
ing populations  of  Christendom,  the  passions, 
faults,  virtues,  hungerings,  aspirings  of  them 
all  ?  Is  our  thought  large  enough,  compre- 
hensive enough,  teachable  enough  for  all 
this  ?  Is  God  manifesting  himself  in  all 
this,  or  only  in  a  part  of  it?  And  what 
is  life,  this  flood  of  energy  that  emerges 
into  consciousness,  that  thinks,  experiences, 
feels,  loves,  hates,  and  reaches  out  after  some 
unknown  satisfaction,  seemingly  as  various 
as  the  individuals  are  various  ?  Is  it  an  in- 
trinsic thing,  individual  and  immortal,  or  is 
it  a  something  that  characterizes  the  mass, 
and  passes  away  with  the  mass  as  that  de- 
scends to  the  grave  ?  You  and  I  have  each 
our  answ^er  to  all  this.  The  Bible  affords 
us  strong  indications  and  presumptions  re- 
garding all  this.  But  all  this,  duly  studied, 
answering  for  itself,  and  full  of  meaning  and 
enlightenment  for  us,  is  what  we  want. 

Now  the  newer  religious  thinking  is  rever- 
ent toward  all  this,  as  the  w^ork  of  God  ;  and 

8 


1 14       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

is  full  of  expectation  toward  it,  as  manifest- 
ing forth  God ;  and  proposes  to  neglect 
nothing  of  it,  lest  in  doing  so,  it  should  miss 
something  of  God,  even  as  naught  was  to  be 
omitted  from  Holy  Writ.  God,  it  is  sure, 
cannot  disagree  with  himself.  The  God  in 
the  world  and  the  God  in  the  Bible  cannot 
be  two,  but  must  be  one.  And  the  newer 
religious  thinking  lays  its  ear  close  to  the 
heart  of  nature,  close  to  the  phonograph  of 
history,  close  to  the  throbbing  bosom  of  life, 
Bible  in  hand,  to  listen,  compare,  learn,  and 
derive,  no  matter  by  how  slow  processes,  the 
ampler,  better  balanced,  more  rational,  more 
heart-affecting  truth.  And  it  does  so,  not 
only  because,  like  Luther,  it  "  cannot  other- 
wise," but  because  the  Bible  bids  it  to,  say- 
ing, "  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  ;  " 
saying,  "  Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field,  how 
they  grow;"  saying,  "The  invisible  things 
of  him  since  the  creation  of  the  world  are 
clearly  seen,  being  perceived  through  the 
things  that  are  made." 

And    if   the    heart    falters;    if    one    asks, 
*'  Whither  is  all  this  tending.^  "  if  it  seems  as 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     1 15 

if  the  old  were  passing  away,  and  the  new 
were  all  in  uncertainty,  then  are  heard  the 
words,  "  I  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto 
you,  but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now;  "  and  the 
words,  "  When  he,  the  Spirit  of  truth,  is 
come,  he  shall  guide  you  into  all  the  truth." 
For  each  age  has  seen  only  in  a  mirror, 
darkly ;  the  thinking  of  the  past  has  largely 
yielded  to  far  better  thinking ;  and  as  there 
were  ages  and  orders  in  geology,  each  imper- 
fect, each  preparative  to  another,  and  each 
passing  away,  so  there  are  ages  and  orders 
of  thought,  and  of  religious  thought.  We 
apprehend  very  imperfectly,  and  the  one 
thing  to  do  is  to  get  all  the  truth  we  can, 
and  live  it  out  into  golden  deeds,  and  ex- 
pect ampler  truth  to  break  forth,  by  means 
of  the  golden  deeds  of  the  present,  for  the 
men  that  shall  come  after  us,  and  shall  be 
surprised  at  our  limited  vision,  even  as  we 
are  surprised  at  the  same  limitation  in  those 
who  have  gone  before  us.  "  Behold,  I  make 
all  things  new,"  saith  God ;  and  he  is  ever 
verifying  that  word.  Let  us,  then,  be  well 
content    that    this    is    so,    and    not    borrow 


1 1 6       The  Newer  Religious  Tkiiiking, 

trouble,  but  press  fearlessly,  truthfully,  livingly 
forward.  Not  in  what  is  now  present,  but 
in  that  which  is  to  be,  shall  perfection  and 
finality  reside ;  but  it  is  for  us  to  further  that, 
and  to  be  sharers  in  its  glory  by  and  by. 

III.  If  I  have  now  sufficiently  indicated 
the  solemn  and  momentous  nature  of  the 
task  laid  upon  the  newer  religious  thinking, 
namely,  to  listen  to  the  whole  oracle,  and 
hear  all  the  truth ;  and  if  I  have  sufficiently 
suggested  with  what  reverence  and  expecta- 
tion the  newer  religious  thinking  is  interro- 
gating nature,  history,  and  life,  or,  in  one 
word,  the  world,  as  the  work  of  God,  as 
manifesting  forth  God,  and  as  able  to  illu- 
minate the  Bible,  even  as  the  Bible  illumi- 
nates it,  —  permit  me  to  name,  in  conclusion, 
certain  specific  points  as  characteristic  of 
this  newer  approach  to  nature,  history,  and 
life. 

I.  And,  first,  if  we  are  to  admit  the  objec- 
tive reality  of  the  universe,  —  that  is  to  say, 
if  we  do  not  conclude  that  the  universe  is 
only  an  objectivization  of  thought  or  of 
mind, — space  must  speak   to  us   in   a  Ian- 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     117 

guage  far  more  impressive  than  has  been  the 
case  in  the  past;  and  so  must  time. 

For,  on  the  one  hand,  the  progress  in  as- 
tronomy, the  revelations  of  tlie  great  tele- 
scopes, the  more  accurate  mapping  of  the 
heavens,  the  better  apprehension  of  the 
movements  of  the  so-called  fixed  stars,  the 
story  told  us  by  star-dust  and  nebulae,  and 
the  more  adequate  apprehension  of  the  origin 
of  such  groups  of  celestial  bodies  as  our 
solar  system,  —  all  these  impress  the  mind 
with  the  vastness  of  space,  with  the  fulness 
of  it,  with  the  seemingly  endless  C3^cles  of 
its  stellar  movements,  and  with  the  small 
part  our  planet  has  to  play  in  so  great  an 
order,  and  yet  with  the  mighty  persistence 
of  our  planet's  part  in  it.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  this  is  becoming  so  much  better 
known,  and  is  so  enterins:  into  the  ordinarv 
comprehension  even  of  children,  that  its 
effect  on  the  mind  is  being  greatly  extended. 
The  facts,  and  the  apprehension  of  the  facts, 
in  short,  cannot  but  affect  our  thinking.  To 
the  universe,  one  must  believe,  there  is  a 
unity.     One  thought  is  in  it ;  one  directing 


1 1 8       The  Newer  Religiotts  Thinking. 

purpose.  Of  it,  as  a  part,  our  planet  must 
have  been  during  an  unimaginably  long  past, 
and,  as  would  seem,  must  be  during  an  unim- 
aginably long  future.  The  widening  boun- 
daries of  space  thus  call  for  widening 
boundaries  of  time,  —  a  thing  also  suggested 
by  such  extremely  slow  land-making  as  must 
have  marked  the  emergence  from  the  ocean 
of  such  territory  as  the  peninsula  of  Florida ; 
a  thing  suggested  by  the  periods  of  glacia- 
tion  on  the  earth's  surface ;  and  a  thing 
suggested,  also,  by  the  obviously  great  an- 
tiquity of  man. 

If,  now,  space  is  so  great,  and  time  so  long, 
and  our  earth  so  little  and  yet  so  linked 
to  the  greatness  and  the  long  continuance 
of  the  universe,  must  it  not  be  evident  that 
the  Bible  men  are  speaking  to  us  out  of 
inadequate  space  and  time  categories,  even 
as  the  Saviour  warned  the  Apostles  when  he 
said,  "  But  of  that  day  and  hour  knoweth  no 
one,  not  even  the  angels  of  heaven,  neither 
the  Son,  but  the  Father  only  " }  Has  not  the 
time  been  long  ?  And  will  it  not,  by  all 
universe    and   planet    indications,    be   long } 


Its  Thought  of  Natter e.  History,  Life.     119 

And  is  not  the  plan,  therefore,  by  so  much 
the  greater?  And  is  it  not  as  extensive  as 
space,  and  as  inclusive  ?  And  yet  wherein 
have  our  systems,  shut  into  the  old,  imper- 
fect time  and  space  categories,  recognized 
this  ?  These  are  questions  which  the  newer 
religious  thinking,  laying  the  world  Bible 
and  the  pen-and-ink  Bible  side  by  side,  and 
reverently  scrutinizing  both,  cannot  help 
asking:.  And  with  the  answer  to  these 
questions   much   else  is   associated. 

2.  Then,  too,  regarding  the  origin  and 
unfolding  of  life  on  this  planet,  the  new^er 
relio-ious  thinking:  "cannot  otherwise"  than 
repair  to  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zool- 
ogy, which  its  great  founder,  in  his  modesty, 
specified  should  not  be  called  by  his  name, 
but  which  everybody  speaks  of  as  the  Agassiz 
Museum  ;  and  "  cannot  otherwise  "  than  re- 
pair to  the  Peabody  Museum  of  American 
Archaeology  and  Ethnology,  and  to  like 
places,  to  learn  how  gradually,  by  what  pro- 
gressive stages,  and  in  what  long  cycles, 
animal  life  led  the  way  to  the  life  of  man, 
and  man,  in  turn,  has  come  to  be  man  as  we 
know  him  to-day. 


I20       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

Ah  !  there  was  an  evolution.  It  is  a  mere 
question  of  detail,  relativel}^  what  its  stages 
were.  Slowly,  gradually,  type  succeeding 
type,  intelligence  more  and  more  predomi- 
nating, and  heart  more  and  more  interplay- 
ing  with  intelligence,  did  life  come,  and  man 
come,  and  the  man  that  now  is,  come  to  be 
what  he  is  ;  and  how  can  we  infer,  off-hand, 
that  the  clock  has  struck,  that  we  are  the 
culmination  of  being,  that  other,  larger  life 
is  not  to  succeed  }  At  this  great  question 
the  newer  relisfious  thinking:  dares  to  look. 
It  places  the  two  Books,  both  of  God,  side 
by  side,  —  the  world  Book  and  the  pen-and- 
ink  Book,  —  and  interrogates  both  and  waits 
for  light.  And  while  it  lingers  thus,  awe- 
struck, amidst  its  studies,  determined  to  listen 
to  the  whole  oracle,  not  to  a  part  of  it,  it 
hears  again  the  words,  "  Of  that  day  and 
hour  knoweth  no  one,  not  even  the  angels 
of  heaven,  neither  the  Son,  but  the  Father 
only  ;  "  and  it  hears  that  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved  chanting,  in  old  age,  as  a  newer  world 
on  this  earth  was  in  like  manner  confront- 
ing him,  "  It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be." 


Its  Thotight  of  N'aiMre,  History,  Life.     121 

3.  The  newer  religious  thinking  con- 
fronts in  the  same  spirit  other  aspects  of 
nature,  into  which  It  Is  Impossible  now  to  go, 
thouorh  I  cannot  but  refer  to  two  of  them. 

One  is  force,  or  life,  or  whatever  It  Is  to 
be  called,  —  the  thing  alive  In  nature,  the 
active  principle,  forceful  in  gravity,  forceful 
In  cohesion,  forceful  In  capillary  attraction, 
forceful  In  chemical  affinity,  forceful  In  elec- 
tricity, heat,  and  light,  forceful  in  vegetation, 
In  animal  life.  In  brain  life.  What  Is  this 
force  ?  What  Is  this  energy  1  Is  it  one 
thing  and  the  same,  or  is  it  many  things  } 
Has  It  consciousness  In  any  sense  t  By  what 
medium  Is  it  directed  ?  Is  the  old  category 
of  law  enough  for  it  .^  Has  it  some  sort  of 
volition  and  power  of  initiative  }  Studies  In 
energy,  in  force,  how  they  stir  the  soul ! 
How  they  seem  to  pierce  the  veil  and  show 
us  the  invisible ! 

This  Is  one  direction.  The  other  which  I 
will  mention  Is  psychic  energy.  From  this 
platform,  not  long  since,  that  great  psychol- 
ogist, Professor  James,  told  us  some  of  its 
wonders.     Through    what    medium    does   it 


122       The  Newer  Relio-iotis  Thinkiiicr. 

work  ?  By  what  processes  ?  What  is  mem- 
ory ?  What  are  associations  of  ideas  ?  What 
part  has  heredity  in  it  all  ?  The  mind,  con- 
sciousness, processes  of  thought,  powers  of 
inter-mental  influence,  —  toward  these,  too, 
as  well  as  toward  force  or  energy,  does  the 
newer  religious  thinking  face,  Bible  in  hand, 
interpreting  each  book  in  the  light  of  the 
other,  and  bent  on  hearing  the  whole  oracle, 
the  whole  truth. 

I  have  mentioned  specifically,  thus  far, 
certain  aspects  of  nature  only ;  namely,  space 
and  time,  the  unfolding  of  life  and  of  the  life 
of  man,  and,  as  samples  of  much  more,  force 
or  energy,  and  psychic  energy.  What  is 
still  further  to  be  said  relates,  first,  to  history, 
and,  after  that,  to  life. 

4.  The  newer  religious  thinking  hungers, 
then,  for  accurate  historical  knowledge ;  that 
it  may  know  how,  nature-impelled,  life,  but 
particularly  human  life,  has  unfolded  itself. 
This,  of  necessity,  must  be  a  mighty  com- 
mentary on  nature  as  well  as  on  life.  And 
the  newer  relis^ious  thinkinsf  is  well  aware 
what   a  shock   almost   all   historical   inquiry 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     123 

must  needs  be  to  conventional  ideas.  For 
only  recently  has  history  been  so  studied 
as  thoroughly  to  distinguish  between  the 
loose,  popular,  and  often  entirely  erroneous 
form  which  history  has  taken,  and  the  facts 
of  history  itself ;  so  that  accurate  historical 
knowledge  must  often  be  at  variance  with 
popular  conceptions.  On  such  studies  the 
newer  religious  thinking  waits  for  an  ade- 
quate account  of  nature  brought  down  to 
date,  and  particularly  of  man.  What,  it 
asks,  has  been  the  order  of  events,  what  the 
true  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  what  the 
inherent  possession  of  man,  and  whither  his 
tendency } 

{a)  In  this  inquiry  —  strongly  suggested 
to  us  by  the  continuous  historical  impulse  of 
the  Old  Testament,  and  by  the  tendency  to 
historical  summary  in  the  speakers  and 
writers  of  the  New  Testament  —  there  are 
two  matters  of  which  the  newer  religious 
thinking  takes  special  account;  namely,  the 
contributions  to  thought  of  the  different 
peoples,  and  of  the  great  spokesmen  of  the 
peoples.      What,  for    instance,   was    it  that 


1 24       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

inspired  the  great  migrations  coincident 
with  the  migration  of  Abraham  ?  What 
impelled  the  great  Indo-European  march 
from  the  Aryan  table-lands  of  Central  Asia, 
toward  the  West,  until  Europe  was  possessed 
by  it,  and  it  passed  on  to  the  New  World  ? 
What  was  it,  characteristically,  that  Egypt 
gave  to  the  world,  that  Assyria  gave,  that 
Palestine  and  Greece  and  Rome  gave  ? 
What  is  the  Teutonic  impulse,  one  side  of 
it  forceful  through  Anglo-Saxons,  another 
through  Germans?  So  of  the  Celt,  the 
Slav,  the  Red  Indian  ?  All  these  have  a 
place  in  that  revelation  of  God  which  the 
world  is,  and,  Bible  in  hand,  the  newer  reli- 
gious thinking  presses  these  questions.^ 

(J))  But  especially  significant  in  the  eyes 
of  the  newer  religious  thinking  is  all  this, 
as  expressing  itself  in  national  impulse  and 
in  creative  literature.  The  Hebrews  came  to 
the  front  from  a  national  impulse,  guided 
of  God.  So  must  all  nations  have  come 
forward.      Therefore,     analogously    to    the 

1  For  something  further  on  the  subject  of  this  paragraph 
and  the  next,  see  Appendix  A. 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History,  Life.     125 

contributions  to  thought  which  the  Hebrews 
offered,  though  of  a  different  importance,  one 
awaits  the  testimony  of  all  national  impulses, 
— for  instance,  of  that  national  impulse  which 
found  expression  in  the  Arthur  legends,  and 
which  Tennyson  has  idealized  for  all  coming 
time.  It  is  not  true  alone  of  men,  but  also 
of  nations,  that  there  is  a  spirit  in  them, 
"  and  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth 
them  understanding."  In  the  same  spirit 
the  newer  religious  thinking  listens  teach- 
ably  to  all  truly  creative  literature.  Homer 
can  teach  it;  the  hymn-makers  of  India; 
the  tablets  of  Nineveh ;  the  Latin  poets  ;  the 
cycles  of  the  Nibelungen  Lied  and  of  King 
Arthur ;  Dante  and  Shakespeare  and  Mil- 
ton, and  the  poets  in  prose  and  rhythm  of 
our  own  age.  In  a  certain  quality,  none  of 
them  touches  the  high-water  mark  of  the 
great,  constructive  Hebrew  writers,  but  all 
of  them  have  a  part  to  contribute  to  the 
expression,  emphasis,  idealization,  and  actu- 
alization of  truth.  Therefore,  Bible  in  hand, 
the  newer  religious  thinking  addresses  itself 
to  these  imperishable  aspects  of  history,  bent 


126       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

here,  as  elsewhere,  on  hearing  the  whole 
oracle  and  the  whole  truth. 

5.  Finally,  before  life,  the  newer  religious 
thinking,  Bible  in  hand,  sits  docilely. 

There  is  nothing  like  it.  One  touch  of  it, 
as  our  great  dramatist  said  of  nature  (using 
it  in  the  sense  of  life),  "  makes  the  whole 
world  kin."  Life,  life,  life,  seen  in  the  smile 
or  the  tears  of  an  infant ;  seen  in  the  laugh- 
ter and  new  discoveries  of  boys  and  girls ; 
seen  in  that  strange  apocalypse,  the  oncom- 
ing of  maturity  and  the  dawn  of  love  in 
young  men  and  women ;  seen  in  maturity  as 
it  advances  through  ever  fresh  stages,  new 
youths,  as  it  were,  till  the  head  is  white,  and 
the  strong  limbs  totter,  and  man  goeth  to  his 
long  home  ;  seen  in  the  ever  new  combina- 
tions of  the  family,  of  the  community,  of  the 
State,  of  the  nation;  seen  in  the  movements 
of  population ;  seen  in  the  controversies 
which  agitate  society ;  seen  in  the  mighty 
enthusiasms  which  ever  and  anon  seize  the 
world  ;  seen  in  the  march  of  armies  to  battle, 
and  in  those  peaceful  triumphs  which  issue 
in    international    arbitrations,  in    peace  con- 


Its  Thought  of  Nature,  History^  Life.     127 


grosses,  and  in  the  great  world's  fairs  ;  seen, 
in  short,  on  every  hand,  and  felt  in  every 
heart,  and  only  apprehended  by  our  being 
ourselves  alive,  —  life,  life,  life,  this  is  the 
ultimate,  the  test,  the  arbiter,  the  luminous 
thing  on  this  globe. 

Hence,  at  its  feet,  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing sits,  Bible  in  hand  still,  which  tells  of 
One  who  said,  "  I  came  that  they  may  have 
life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly."  The 
thoughts  which  come  rolling  in  upon  this 
thinking  it  proposes  to  reduce  to  life,  to  test 
by  life,  to  put  to  the  proof  in  the  conflict  of 
life ;  and,  while  it  studies  the  pen-and-ink 
Bible,  also  to  study  the  world  Bible,  in 
nature,  history,  life,  —  sure  that  he  who  was 
"  the  Life,"  and  is  it,  wishes  the  whole  of  it 
to  be  apprehended,  appreciated,  obeyed,  and 
made  alive  in  Christly  living. 

"  In  him  was  life  ;  and  the  life  was  the 
light  of  men;"  and  in  like  manner  all  the 
life  which  he  has  touched  and  inspired  — 
and  his  touch  and  inspiration  are  on  and  in 
all  life  —  is  also,  in  larger  or  smaller  degree, 
the  lii^ht  of  men.     So  believing,  the  newer 


128       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

thinking  presses  on  in  the  path,  the  infinite 
path,  stretching  before  it  forever.  Shall 
not  we  be  of  it  ?  Ah !  but  we  cannot  help 
being  of  it !  No  man  can  quite  escape  from 
his  time.  No  man  can  quite  shut  out  the 
light  of  God. 


ITS    IDEA   OF   THE   BIBLE. 


SYNOPSIS. 

Phenomenal  antiquity,  sunnval,  and  world-affecting  influ- 
ence of  the  Bible.  —  Greatly  diverse,  and  yet  a  unit.  —  Effec- 
tiveness of  its  form ;  its  fiiidiiig  power.  —  Universality  of 
its  hold  on  men.  —  It  is  The  Book.  —  Its  influence  steadily 
augmenting.  —  Anxiety  regarding  it  superfluous  and  wasted 
(historical  examples).  —  Reverence  of  the  newer  religious 
thinking  for  it.  —  Certain  inquiries  about  it  now  much  at  the 
front:  (i)  How  are  the  Genesis  forewords  to  be  understood? 
Ecclesiastical  ill  treatment  of  them  in  the  past ;  also  in  the 
present ;  why  the  belief  is  growing  that  the  forewords  are  a 
poetic  treatment,  inspired,  and  for  moral  and  spiritual  ends, 
of  matter  derived  from  a  common  stock  of  ancient  tradition. 
(2)  Was  the  order  of  Israel's  life  from  priests  to  prophets, 
or  vice  versa  ?  Why  belief  is  tending  in  the  latter  direction, 
with  the  recognition  of  needful  consequent  re-arrangement 
of  historical  details.  (3)  The  New  Testament  documents 
largely  original  and  nearly  contemporaneous.  But :  («)  Not 
enough  allowance  is  ordinarily  made  for  the  immediate  use 
for  which  they  were  intended  ;  also  {b)  Should  they  prove 
less  largely  original  and  less  nearly  contemporaneous,  their 
power  for  moral  and  spiritual  helpfulness  would  not  be 
impaired  thereby.  —  The  Bible  bound  hand  and  foot  in  the 
past  in  certain  respects,  and  needing  deliverance.  —  Its  free 
investigation  imperative,  and  conducive  to  its  highest  useful- 
ness.— The  book  is  from  God;  its  light  and  warmth  are 
eternal. 


V. 

ITS   IDEA   OF   THE   BIBLE.i 

Every  scripture  inspired  of  God  is  also  profitable  for 
teaching,  for  reproof  for  correction^  for  instruction 
which  is  ill  righteousness :  that  the  man  of  God 
may  be  cotnplete,  furnished  completely  unto  every  good 
work.  —  2  Timothy  iii.  i6,  17. 


T 


HERE  is  a  book  containing  fragments 
of  literature  probably  older  than  any 
other  literature ;  a  book,  in  itself  and  as  a 
whole,  among  the  oldest  of  books ;  a  book 
preserved  with  a  care  so  scrupulous  that  the 
variations  in  its  exceedingly  ancient  manu- 
scripts, though  numerous  in  minor  respects, 
are  far  fewer  than  in  any  other  ancient 
writing  of  like  extent  and  often  transcribed ; 
a  book  regarded  for  many  ages  as  sacred ;  a 
book  the  embodiment  of  that  W'Onderful 
relio^ious  life  which  marked  the  Hebrew 
people,  —  the  embodiment  of  that  thinking 

1  Prospect  Street,  Sunday  night,  December  4,  1892. 


132       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

and  history  which,  in  the  fulness  of  time, 
made  a  sharp  break  with  the  Hebrews,  and 
which  retaining  what  was  germinal  in  the 
Israelitish  religion  suddenly  emancipated 
the  same  from  narrowing  Hebrew  bounds, 
enriched  it  marvellously,  and  gave  it,  with 
exulting  joy,  to  become  the  possession  of 
all  mankind. 

This  book  had  a  most  diverse  authorship, 
some  twoscore  hands  at  least  appearing  in 
it.  It  sprang  likewise  out  of  many  ages, 
and  out  of  vastly  different  environments 
and  thought-currents.  Much  of  its  upspring- 
ing,  moreover,  was  out  of  heated  conflicts 
of  opinion,  when,  from  time  to  time  through 
ages,  the  old  was  dying,  and  the  new  was 
strusfoflino:  to  be  born.  There  were  great 
diversities  of  specific  purpose  for  which 
its  different  parts  were  respectively  com- 
posed. And  yet  its  many  hands,  its  varied 
settings  and  varied  age-marks,  the  succes- 
sive intellectual  and  spiritual  conflicts  out 
of  which  it  sprang,  and  the  diversities  of 
specific  purpose  for  which  its  parts  were 
written,  —  all  these   have    not   caused    in  it 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  133 

confusion,  but  rather  unity,  as  if  still,  in  dif- 
ferent aspects,  one  and  the  same  thought, 
purpose,  inspiration,  was  getting  for  itself 
expression. 

Thus  wonderfully  a  unit,  it  is  nevertheless 
literature  multiform,  —  history,  biography, 
poetry,  parable,  philosophy,  proverb,  law, 
maxim,  and  much  besides.  As  regards  finish, 
it  is  not,  in  most  parts,  elaborated  to  the 
degree  which  some  literature  exhibits ;  but 
the  plainness,  directness,  and  simplicity 
gained  thereby  more  than  offset  any  loss 
in  literary  form,  while  it  contains  many 
passages  as  exquisite  in  this  respect  as 
anything  even  in  the  Greek  tongue.  It  is 
strangely  able,  out  of  these  characteristics, 
to  find  its  reader,  to  touch  his  heart,  to  stir 
his  mind  and  conscience,  to  illumine  his 
understanding,  and  to  make  him  truly  wise. 
Hereby  it  has  entered  into  the  lives  of  whole 
peoples,  has  moulded  them,  swayed  them, 
and  given  them  laws,  liberty,  and  spiritual 
momentum. 

It  has,  moreover,  been  able  to  affect  equally 
all  classes  and  types  of  men,  —  the  doubter 


1 34       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 


and  the  man  of  intense  faith  ;  the  man  coldly 
intellectual  and  the  man  of  great  heart  fer- 
vors ;  the  cultivated  and  the  illiterate  ;  the  vile 
and  sinning  and  the  pure  and  holy  ;  great 
patriots  and  great  scientists ;  great  statesmen 
and  ofreat  inventors  and  discoverers ;  women 
equally  with  men ;  the  aged  equally  with 
little  children  ;  those  marching  into  the 
leaden  hail  of  battle  and  those  studying  in 
the  quiet  cloisters  of  universities ;  those  keep- 
ing step  to  marriage  music  and  those  bearing 
the  dead  to  their  last  home.  It  has  been 
a  comfort  alike  to  sovereigns  and  to  slaves, 
in  palaces  and  in  prisons,  to  laborers  and  to 
the  luxurious,  to  those  toiling,  sorrowing, 
despairing,  and  to  those  hoping,  thriving, 
successful,  —  in  short,  to  every  human  being 
whom,  in  whatsoever  circumstances,  it  has 
reached,  and  who  would  let  it  reach  him. 

For  reasons  such  as  the  foregoing,  it  is 
The  Book,  and  accordingly  it  has  come 
about  that  it  bears  the  name  for  "  book  "  in 
the  Greek  tongue,  with  the  definite  article 
prefixed,  and  is  called,  in  our  dear  English 
speech,  with  almost  the  letters  corresponding 
to  those  in  Greek,  The  Bible. 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  135 

Nor  is  the  power  of  this  book  waning. 
It  is  rather  steadily  augmenting,  as  it  is 
more  and  more  spread  abroad,  more  and  more 
freed  from  misconceptions,  and  better  and 
better  understood.  Its  force  is  moral,  and, 
as  the  moral  sense  is  developing,  it  is  more 
and  more  finding  men.  It  was  never  read 
by  so  many  people  as  are  reading  it  to-day, 
and  never  was  bearing  fruit  in  so  many  lives 
as  it  is  bearing  fruit  in  to-day. 

Anxiety  is  often  expressed  for  its  future. 
Never  was  anxiety  more  utterly  superfluous 
and  wasted.  The  Bible  has  survived  crises 
to  which,  at  present,  there  is  no  parallel. 
It  has  been  almost  destroyed  from  the  earth 
literally,  more  than  once,  as,  for  example,  in 
Josiah's  time.  It  has  been  buried  in  inade- 
quate translations,  for  example,  the  Latin 
Vulgate,  for  centuries.  It  has  repeatedly 
been  hid  from  the  common  people,  as  during 
the  Dark  Ages.  It  has  been  loaded  down 
with  paraphrases  and  commentaries  in  past 
times  to  an  extent  which  nearly  extinguished 
the  book  itself.  It  has  been  embarrassed  by 
good    men's   making  claims  for  it  which  it 


1 36       The  Newer  Religions  Thinking. 

never  makes  for  itself,  and  by  suffering 
attacks  upon  it  in  consequence,  for  the  mak- 
ing of  which  there  was  no  just  ground.  But 
it  lives.  Its  influence  is  steadily  widening 
and  deepening.  It  does  not  need  any  of  our 
anxiety;  it  is  abundantly  able  to  take  care 
of  itself. 

The  newer  religious  thinking  responds  to 
all  this.  It  reverences  the  Bible.  Those  men 
outside  the  lines  which  include  you  and  me, 
the  men  who  would  call  themselves  of  unfaith 
and  of  no  faith,  freely  and  often  express  their 
great  regard  for  it,  and,  in  their  way,  bear 
testimony  to  its  benign  influence  upon  them. 
So  of  the  so-called  "  Unevangelicals."  So 
of  the  men  outside  the  boundaries  of  Prot- 
estantism. Men  of  these  different  classes, 
as  I  pointed  out  in  the  first  of  these  dis- 
courses, are  themselves  also  in  a  newer 
religious  thinking  ;  and  their  types  of  such 
thinking  are  steadily  making.  In  their  respec- 
tive manners,  more,  not  less,  of  the  Bible. 
Of  the  newer  religious  thinking  within  so- 
called  "  evangelical  "  lines,  in  its  manner  also, 
the  same  is  true.     The  Bible  was  never  so 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  137 

much  to  its  men  as  now.  It  was  never 
so  much   to   me  as  now. 

From  this  preliminary  statement,  I  ask 
you  to  pass  to  the  consideration  of  two 
points :  first,  certain  inquiries  about  the 
Bible  now  much  at  the  front ;  and,  secondly, 
the  sense  in  which,  to  the  newer  religious 
thinking,  the  Bible  is  so  much ;  yes,  more 
even  than  ever  before.     And, — 

I.  Certain  inquiries  about  the  Bible  now 
much  at  the  front. 

I.  The  first  of  these  is  about  the  prole- 
gomena, or  forewords,  of  the  Bible ;  those 
sententious,  wonderful  passages  which  brood 
for  us  amidst  the  beginnings  of  things,  and 
afford  us  a  tender,  simple,  luminous  setting 
for  all  that  follows  after  them.  How  impor- 
tant, for  comprehensiveness,  background,  and 
symmetry,  it  is,  that  the  Bible  should  get 
some  such  introduction  to  its  readers,  it  is 
easy  to  see.  The  question  is.  How  are  we 
to  understand  these  forewords, —  Creation, 
Man  and  Woman,  Eden,  The  First  Sin,  The 
First  Murder,  The  First  Civilization,  The 
Flood,  The  Origin  of  Diversity  in  Lan- 
c^uages,  etc.  ? 


138       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

But,  first,  let  it  be  premised  that,  among 
other  ill  treatments  of  the  Bible,  there  has 
been  one  centring  at  these  very  forewords, 
which  the  newer  religious  thinking  can  never 
forget.  The  study  of  astronomy  was  long 
hampered  by  the  old  Church  interpretation 
ol  these  passages.  This  was  why  Copernicus 
delayed  the  publication  of  his  astronomy 
until  he  was  about  to  die,  and  why  Galileo 
was  persecuted  for  afiirming  planetary  revo- 
lutions. Similarly,  within  years  more  recent, 
the  studies,  first  of  geology,  and  then  of 
glaciation  (so  recently  as  the  lifetime  of 
Agassiz),  have  been  hindered  by  the  same 
understanding  of  these  passages.  The  earth, 
it  was  claimed,  could  not  have  been  strati- 
fied by  the  causes  which  geology  affirmed, 
because  the  six  days  of  creation  gave  no  time 
therefor  ;  and  glacial  epochs  were  alleged  to 
have  been  superfluous,  because  the  Flood 
took  care  of  all  that.  But  Copernicus  and 
Galileo,  and  Kepler  and  Newton,  had  their 
way ;  and  then  the  great  geologists  had 
theirs ;  and  the  utterly  unwarrantable  claims 
which  holy  men  had  put  forth  for  the  Bible 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible,  139 

had  to  be  withdrawn,  after  all  the  hard 
words,  and  the  trembling  of  devout  souls, 
and  the  humiliating  position  for  a  great, 
comprehensive  book  like  the  Bible  to  be  put 
in,  —  namely,  the  position  of  defence. 

And  while  the  newer  religious  thinking 
is  recalling  this,  it  sees  before  its  eyes  the 
present  prodigious  studies  in  zoology,  in 
ethnology,  and  in  the  gradual  unfolding  of  the 
race  of  man  on  this  planet,  —  studies  more 
recent  than  those  to  which  I  have  referred 
in  astronomy,  in  geology,  and  in  glaciation, 
which  raised  such  a  hue  and  cry,  and  against 
which  Scripture  texts  were  hurled ;  but 
studies  pursuing  those  same  slow,  plodding 
methods  of  induction  by  which  we  came  to 
our  present  views  of  astronomy,  geology,  and 
glaciation  ;  and  as  seemingly  likely  to  prove 
true  as  they  proved  true.  And  here  again 
the  newer  religious  thinking  sees  the  Bible 
put  in  the  same  false  and  humiliating  posi- 
tion, of  trying  to  conquer  Darwin  by  proof- 
texts,  and  the  godly  McCosh  by  creed-bound 
professors  of  Hebrew. 

Another  fact  under  the  eye  of  the  newer 


140       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

religious  thinking  Is  the  Hebrew  Itself,  and 
its  cognate  languages  ;  and  what  the  monu- 
ments of  Egypt  and  of  Assyria,  with  a  great 
variety  of  other  ancient  memorials,  have  to 
tell  us.  From  these  and  other  studies  it 
appears  that  counterparts  of  these  forewords 
of  the  Bible  were  numerous  in  the  early 
ages,  and  in  a  great  variety  of  forms,  —  Crea- 
tion, and  The  Flood,  for  example.  Almost 
every  ancient  people  had  accounts  like  these, 
but  with  diversified  details.  Which  were 
original?  Did  the  Bible  borrow  from  them? 
Did  they  borrow  from  the  Bible  ?  Or  did 
they  and  the  Bible  alike  draw  from  a  com- 
mon store  of  tradition  in  the  possession  of 
antiquity  ?  Of  these  three  suppositions  the 
last  —  namely,  that  the  Hebrew  writers  drew, 
as  did  the  writers  of  other  nations,  from  a 
general  and  common  store  of  tradition  — 
seems  to  many  In  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing as  the  most  probable. 

Moreover,  a  comparison  of  the  Hebrew 
treatment  of  a  particular  tradition,  and  the 
treatment  of  the  same  tradition  by  the 
writers  of  other  peoples,  reveals  the  fact  that, 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible,  141 

in  each  instance,  the  Hebrew  treatment 
differs  from  the  rest  in  the  accentuation  of 
the  moral  aspect  of  the  story.  For  instance, 
in  the  very  common  story  of  The  Fratricide, 
the  other  writers  make  a  hero  of  him,  or 
even  a  demigod  ;  but  the  Hebrew  account, 
while  indicating  his  city-building,  etc.,  points 
out  the  shame  and  crime  of  his  bloody  deed, 
—  the  mark  of  Cain.  These  comparisons, 
together  with  the  seemingly  conclusive  infer- 
ence that  the  Hebrew  and  the  other  writers 
were  not  drawing,  the  one  from  the  other, 
but  all  from  a  common  store  of  tradition, 
lead  naturally  to  the  inference  that  these 
Bible  forewords,  instead  of  being  historical 
and  literal  accounts  of  the  First  Things,  were 
the  attempt  of  holy  men  of  God,  "  moved  by 
the  Holy  Ghost,"  to  redeem  the  common, 
and  often  gross  and  impure,  traditions  of 
early  antiquity,  from  such  grossness  and 
impurity,  and  to  make  them  vehicles  for 
conveying  moral  and  spiritual  truth. 

This  inference  becomes  almost  impera- 
tive in  the  attempt  of  these  writers  to  handle 
the  old  traditions  about  the  illicit  marriages 


142       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

of  demigods  to  women.  This  was  the  com- 
mon ancient  belief.  The  Hebrew  writers 
on  the  ancient  beliefs  could  not  bring  them- 
selves to  look  at  such  marriages  as  anything 
other  than  in  the  highest  degree  immoral, 
and  yet  could  not  prevent  the  wide  credence 
of  these  celestial-earthly  unions.  What,  then, 
did  they  ?  They  took,  very  wisely,  the  old 
stories  and  wrought  from  them  that  myste- 
rious narrative  in  the  first  eight  verses  of  the 
sixth  of  Genesis,  where,  as  they  taught,  such 
conduct  was  so  abhorrent  to  the  God  of  the 
Hebrews  that  he  repented  himself  that  he 
had  made  man  upon  the  earth,  and  was 
moved  thereby  to  bring  on  the  Flood.  How 
natural,  reasonable,  and  morally  tonic  it  thus 
is  to  see  the  whole  cycle  of  such  tales  on  the 
part  of  the  Jupiters  of  the  skies,  and  the  mis- 
guided fair  ones  of  earth,  dismissed  in  eight 
solemn  verses,  not  attempting  to  controvert 
the  common  stories,  —  an  attempt  which  could 
not  then  have  been  successful,  —  but  brand- 
ing them  as  abhorrent  to  Deity,  as  causing 
him  to  say,  "  My  Spirit  shall  not  always 
strive  with  man,"  as  making  him  repent  that 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  143 

he  had  created  man  at  all,  and  as  issuing  in 
the   Flood  ! 

The  newer  religious  thinking,  then,  while 
its  representatives  by  no  means  concur  on 
this  subject,  and  particularly  in  matters  of 
detail,  is  greatly  inclined,  nevertheless,  — 
(i)  in  view  of  the  great  mass  of  such  matter 
in  the  early  traditions  of  our  race  ;  (2)  in  view 
of  the  improbability,  either  that  the  Bible 
narrative  was  what  the  traditions  sprang 
from,  or  that  the  Bible  narrative  sprang  from 
particular  versions  of  the  traditions ;  and 
(3)  in  view  of  the  method  of  treatment  in 
the  Bible  writers,  as  for  moral  and  spiritual 
ends,  —  is  greatly  inclined,  I  say,  to  believe 
that  these  Bible  forewords,  instead  of  being 
historical  and  literal  in  the  sense  of  annals, 
are  spiritual  and  moral,  like  poems.  Similar, 
though  in  a  far  less  important  connection, 
is  the  treatment  by  which  the  more  or  less 
gross  matter  in  the  Arthur  legends  has 
been  purified,  and  made  didactic  of  moral 
and  spiritual  truth,  in  Tennyson's  "  Idyls  of 
the  King." 

If    this    supposition    is    correct,   not    only 


144       1^^^  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

may  Copernicus  and  Galileo,  and  Lyell  and 
Agassiz,  go  on  with  their  astronomy,  geol- 
ogy, and  glaciation,  but  Darwin  and  John 
Fiske  may  go  on  with  their  studies  in  and 
philosophizings  concerning  the  origin  of 
man,  unmolested.  A  simple,  noble,  spiritual 
account  is  given,  and  purpose  shown,  in  these 
forewords ;  they  make  a  natural  introduc- 
tion, poem-wise,  to  the  history  which  succeeds 
them ;  and  holy  men  of  God  are  still  speak- 
ing as  they  are  "  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost," 
"for  teaching,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for 
instruction  which  is  in  righteousness." 

2.  There  is  another  question  now  much 
at  the  front.  It,  and  the  inquiry  about  the 
forewords,  are  the  primary  Old  Testament 
questions.  It  is  much  the  more  complicated 
of  the  two.  But  the  same  simple  principle 
of  growing  life  seems  to  underlie  it.  Ah  ! 
life  is  such  a  touchstone !  The  question  to 
which  I  allude  is  this  :  Which  was  prior  in 
the  order  of  time  in  the  life  of  Israel,  the 
priestly  and  legal  impulse,  as  has  been  the 
traditional  view,  or  the  prophetical  ? 

According  to  almost  all  historical  analo- 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible,  145 


o-ies  the  religious  life  of  nations  is  marked, 
first,  by  mighty  moral  and  spiritual  impulses, 
and  then  by  their  taking  form  in  law  and 
ritual.  But  the  Old  Testament,  in  the  order 
of  its  present  arrangement,  reverses  this  pro- 
cess. There  is,  first,  very  elaborate  law  and 
ritual,  and  then  a  passing  from  these  to  the 
true  inspirers  of  a  people,  their  prophets  and 
psalmists. 

Moreover,  enough  is  now  known  about 
the  origin  of  religions ;  and,  in  particular, 
enough  is  now  known  about  the  great  Semitic 
life  of  which  the  life  of  Israel  was  the  most 
conspicuous  part,  as  well  as  about  the  life 
of  Israel  itself,  —  to  render  it,  inductively, 
highly  probable  that  the  order  was  from  spirit- 
ual impulse  in  men  like  Abraham,  Moses, 
Samuel,  and  David,  to  ritual  and  legal  form, 
from  about  the  general  period  of  Ezra, 
though  having  its  beginnings  much  earlier, 
—  a  view  of  the  case  with  which  the  fearful 
development  of  the  formal  and  legal  spirit 
among  the  Jews  in  our  Saviour's  time  seems 


to  agree. 


This    general   probability    in    the  case  — 


146       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

namely,  that  spirit  would  precede  form,  and 
that  the  mighty  spiritual  impulse  would  pre- 
cede the  elaborations  of  ritual  and  law,  in  the 
shape  in  which  we  now  have  them  —  is 
vastly  augmented  by  the  relief  which  such  a 
view  at  once  brings  to  difficulties  that  are 
constantly  coming  up  on  the  ordinary  view. 
For  instance,  there  had  been,  we  are  told,  no 
such  Passover  as  Josiah's  since  the  days  of 
the  Judges.  But  why  not,  if  this  was  the 
formal  law  for  all  the  years  intervening  ? 
Again,  Samuel,  not  a  priest,  probably  not 
even  a  Levite,  offered  sacrifices.  Why  did 
he  do  that,  if  the  formal  law  as  we  have  it, 
which  assigned  that  duty  to  the  priestly  class, 
was  then  in  existence  ?  So,  too,  numerous 
reformations  in  the  history  of  Israel  throw 
up  items  of  detail  v/hich  are  most  explicable 
on  the  contrary  supposition. 

I  am  aware  that  efforts  are  made,  by  one 
method  or  another,  to  explain  away  all  these 
difficulties,  in  order  to  maintain  that  view 
which  is  traditional,  and  which  the  surface 
of  the  Old  Testament  seems  to  justify. 
But  the  attempt  reminds  one  of  the  cycles 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  147 

and  epicycles  of  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy,  by 
which,  on  the  supposition  that  the  heavenly 
bodies  revolved  in  a  hollow  sphere  around 
the  earth,  it  was  sought  to  explain  the  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  this  view  occasioned 
by  the  seemingly  irregular  and  arbitrary 
movements  of  the  planets.  The  moment  the 
Copernican  astronomy  came  in,  the  cycles 
and  epicycles  vanished ;  the  planets  were 
seen  to  revolve,  not  in  peculiar  but  in  normal 
orbits  ;  and  a  whole  system  of  irregularities, 
until  that  time  ingeniously  and  variously 
explained,  became  no  longer  irregular,  but 
parts  of  one  vast,  simple,  and  comprehensive 
working  of  astronomical  principles. 

So  of  the  seeming  anachronisms  and  arti- 
ficialities of  the  life  of  Israel.  They  are 
capable,  indeed,  of  a  great  variety  of  inge- 
nious explanations;  but  first  become  entirely 
thinkable  if  the  writings,  as  now  collected, 
were,  by  holy  men  of  God  "  moved  by  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  from  time  to  time  rewritten,  or 
re-edited  and  elaborated,  out  of  a  yearning 
and  burning  passion  to  adapt  them  to  the 
successive  needs  and  exigencies  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  life  of  Israel. 


148       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

There  would  be  nothing  dishonest,  neces- 
sarily, in  such  a  course.  The  people  who 
first  heard  or  read  the  writings  in  their 
newer  form  would  understand  it,  as  we  under- 
stand a  poem  or  a  sermon  now,  and  as  a 
similar  treatment  of  the  forewords  was 
probably  understood.  So  far  as  there  were 
fictions  in  the  process,  they  would  either 
be  legal  fictions,  like  many  in  constant  use 
to-day,  w^hich  are  neither  deceits  nor  are 
capable  of  deceiving  anybody ;  or  they  would 
be  the  analogues  of  certain  writings  in  the 
earlier  history  of  Christianity,  put  forth  by 
men  sincerely  seeking  to  serve  God,  and  that, 
too,  not  under  Old  Testament,  but  under 
New  Testament  light. 

Such  a  course  would  also  be  true  to  that 
law  of  spiritual  life  by  which  knowledge  and 
growth  in  things  spiritual  ensue  upon  effort, 
and  especially  effort  for  others.  The  disci- 
ples who  go  out  to  teach  in  the  Saviour's 
name  and  to  do  helpful  works,  learn  and 
grow  as  they  cannot  even  by  staying  with 
him.  He  wisely  tells  them  relatively  little, 
and  leaves  some  of  the  greatest  apostolic  les- 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible,  i49 


sons  to  be  learned  in  the  stress  of  later  work, 
as  Saint  Peter's  at  Joppa,  and  Saint  Paul's 
in  the  obscure  years  in  Arabia  and  Cilicia, 
and  in  the  failure  at  Athens  which  prepared 
the  way  for  the  success  at  Corinth. 

Such  a  course  is  called  for,  as  I  have 
intimated,  by  any  quantity  of  phenomena 
brought  to  light  in  a  critical  study  of  the 
Old  Testament.  They  seem  to  compel  the 
conclusion  that  its  present  state  is  that  into 
which  it  was  gradually  brought  through  suc- 
cessive attempts  of  holy  and  inspired  men  to 
adapt  its  matter  to  current  national  needs. 

What  suffers,  if  this  conclusion  stands? 
Nothing,  except  our  preconceived  notion  of 
how  the  Old  Testament  came  into  existence ; 
a  notion  which  the  Old  Testament  nowhere 

affirms. 

What  gains  ensue,  if  this  conclusion 
stands?  A  general  induction  is  confirmed. 
Difficulties,  met  as  it  were  by  interminable 
Ptolem.aic  epicycles,  vanish.  The  growth  of 
the  Old  Testament  becomes  reasonable,  like 
apostolic  growth.  No  essential  fiction  is  in 
the  process,  but  life,  warm  and  unmistakable. 


1 50       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

We  have  first  spirit,  then  form ;  in  short, 
correspondence  to  the  well-nigh  universal  law 
of  national  and  religious  unfolding,  —  this 
whole  vast  matter  becoming  thus  amenable 
to  the  operations  and  reign  of  spiritual  law, 
instead  of  their  inversion. 

Here  again  the  representatives  of  the 
newer  religious  thinking  are  not  altogether 
concurrent,  and  particularly  in  matters  of 
detail.  They  are,  however,  moving  in  this 
direction.  They  incline  to  the  belief  that  the 
life  of  Israel,  as  it  appears  on  the  surface  of 
the  Old  Testament,  needs  re-arranging  to 
agree  with  facts  now^  ascertained,  and  in 
accordance  wdth  the  laws  of  spiritual  life.^ 

3.  Coming  to  the  New  Testament,  those 
of  you  who  have  perhaps  been  demurring  at 
what  I  have  said  about  the  Old,  will  be  glad 

1  *'  Needs  re-arranging."  Not  the  Old  Testament.  That 
is  inspired  Kterature,  and  should  remain  substantially  as  it  is. 
Some  editions,  however,  as  is  beginning  to  be  done,  should 
be  so  printed  as  to  exhibit  the  real  order  of  the  writings, 
and,  in  the  case  of  those  books  which  are  composite,  the 
respective  elements  entering  into  them,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  ascertained.  "  The  life  of  Israel,"  the  rather,  "  needs 
re-arranging."  That  is,  it  needs  to  be  written,  studied,  and 
thought  of  in  its  real,  rather  than  in  its  apparent,  order. 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  1 5 1 

to  hear  me  say  that  prodigious  critical 
studies,  relatively  new  in  the  Old  Testament, 
have  been  concentrated  on  the  New  for 
nearly  a  century,  with  the  result  mainly  to 
confirm  the  historical  and  detailed  accuracy 
of  the  New  Testament  writings.  That  is  to 
say,  these  writings  are  largely  original,  and 
nearly  contemporaneous.  I  say,  "  mainly  to 
confirm;"  for  there  are  points  on  which  the 
liighest  scholarship  still  hesitates. 

The  general  result  here  indicated  was  to 
have  been  expected.  For  the  years  covered 
by  the  New  Testament  story  were  relatively 
few ;  the  events  occurred  at  the  blazing  fore- 
front of  history  ;  they  occurred  in  what  was 
itself  a  not  altogether  uncritical  age  ;  and 
they  immediately,  as  narrated  in  the  New 
Testament  documents,  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  great  scholars  of  the  second  and  third 
Christian  centuries,  who  must  have  verified 
them  in  greater  or  less  degree.  On  this  part 
of  the  subject  there  are  only  two  remarks 
which   I  desire  to  make. 

{a)  The  first  is,  that,  while  we  prob- 
ably  have   in    the    New    Testament   either 


152       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

documents  in  substantially  their  original 
form,  or  documents  which  for  substance 
reproduce  original  matter,  so  that,  speak- 
ing critically,  we  are  treading  on  somewhat 
solid  ground,  we  have  never  enough  allowed, 
on  the  other  hand,  for  what  the  Apostle  Paul 
asserts  in  the  text,  and  implies  elsewhere,  to 
have  been  the  purpose  of  these  writings ; 
namely,  immediate  usefulness. 

The  Apostle  expects  the  world  soon  to 
end.  He  is  writing  hurried  letters  to  his 
convert  churches.  He  so  writes  as  to  go 
back  and  correct  himself  without  erasure,  as 
in  the  matter  of  the  persons  he  baptized  at 
Corinth.  He  expressly  says,  in  one  instance, 
that  he  is  using  his  own  judgment  about  a 
particular  case,  and  thinks  he  has  the  mind 
of  Christ.^     In  short,  the  writing  is  not  for 

1  For  a  brief,  clear,  and  searching  exposition  of  difficulties 
attending  our  traditional  approach  to  the  Bible,  written  by  a 
rare  scholar  and  a  rare  Christian,  see  "  The  Change  of  Atti- 
tude towards  the  Bible,"  by  Prof.  Joseph  Henry  Thayer, 
D.D.     Houghton,  Mifflin,  and  Company,  Boston.     1891. 

For  an  excellent  discussion,  in  some  detail,  of  this  whole 
general  subject,  see  (same  publishers  and  year)  Dr.  Wash- 
ington Gladden's  "  Who  Wrote  the  Bible  ?  A  Book  for  the 
People." 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  153 

abstract  and  scientific  purposes,  but  for  imme- 
diate and  practical  use,  "that  the  man  of 
God  may  be  .  .  .  furnished  completely  unto 
every  good  work."  He  also  speaks  of  his 
own  limitations  of  knowledge,  knowing,  as 
he  says,  in  part,  and  prophesying  in  part. 

All  this  suggests  to  us,  what  Christ  says, 
that  the  words  he  speaks  are  "spirit  and 
life."  Are  they  not,  then,  to  be  taken  in 
their  spirit  and  life,  for  constructive  moral 
purposes,  rather  than  as  arbitrary  and  hard 
and  fast  proof-texts } 

(b)  My  second  remark  is  that  if  the  criti- 
cal studies  of  nearly  a  century  had  turned 
out  the  other  way,  or,  by  the  arrival  of  fresh 
historical  light,  should  turn  out  the  other 
way ;  that  is  to  say,  if  it  had  turned  out,  or 
should  turn  out,  that  these  precious  docu- 
ments belonged  to  the  second  century,  or  the 
third,  rather  than  the  first,  the  same  rewrit- 
ing and  readjustment  to  the  new  needs  of 
the  Church  taking  place,  as  would  seem  to 
have  taken  place  in  the  Old  Testament, — 
if,  I  say,  this  had  been  proved  (as  has  not 
been  the  case),  or  if  it  should  be  proved  in 


154       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

the  larger  light  of  the  future  (which  seems 
hardly  likely),  still  this  discovery  would  not 
invalidate  the  New^  Testament  documents 
in  the  matter  of  their  appropriate  moral  and 
spiritual  teaching,  any  more  than  those  of 
the  Old  Testament  on  the  corresponding 
supposition. 

These  writings,  in  any  case,  breathe  a 
lofty  moral  and  spiritual  life,  and  that  life 
begets  life  in  men.  "  The  letter  killeth,  but 
the  spirit  giveth  life."  That  spirit,  in  any 
event,  the  New  Testament  contains  to  an 
unequalled  degree.  And  so  long  as  men 
shall  continue  to  hunger  after  and  be  impres- 
sible by  such  a  spirit,  the  New  Testament 
wdll  retain  its  peerless  authority  over  life. 
It  is  not  authoritative  because  certain  theo- 
logical claims  can  be  substantiated  for  it. 
As  they  have  all  come,  so  it  would  matter 
little  if  they  should  all  go.  It  is  authorita- 
tive, rather,  because  it  has  succeeded,  as  no 
other  literature,  in  commanding  the  spirits 
of  men. 

II.  We  now  come,  in  closing,  to  the  sec- 
ond division  of   the  subject,   namely :    The 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  1 5  5 

sense  in  which,  to  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing, the  Bible  is  so  much  ;  yes,  more  even 
than  ever  before. 

The  Bible  has  been  bound  hand  and  foot, 
for  several  centuries,  by  what  is  a  compara- 
tively modern  doctrine,  namely,  that  of  the 
literal  and  verbal  inspiration  of  Scripture.  I 
say  this  is  a  comparatively  modern  doctrine, 
for  the  apostles  quoted  the  Old  Testament 
loosely,  as  they  could  hardly  have  done,  had 
they  regarded  its  very  letters  as  inspired. 
They  themselves,  also,  wrote  as  I  have 
described,  which  they  could  hardly  have 
done,  had  they  thought  of  the  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  and  the  phraseology  which  they 
used,  as  inspired.  Moreover,  the  writers  of 
the  early  Church  quoted  with  the  same  loose- 
ness, and,  like  the  apostles,  were  driving  at 
the  point,  not  the  words. 

By  this  doctrine,  — comparatively  modern, 
because  unknown  to  the  apostles  and  their 
immediate  successors,  —  the  doctrine,  namely, 
of  literal  and  verbal  inspiration,  the  Bible 
has  long  been  hampered  and  mistreated. 
It  was  set  up  to  fight  Copernicus  and  Gali- 


156       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

leo ;  later,  to  fight  Lyell  and  Agassiz  ;  at 
length,  to  fight  Darwin  and  John  Fiske. 
These  positions  into  which,  entirely  with- 
out warrant,  it  has  thus  been  forced,  have 
proved,  unless  we  except  the  last,  —  and 
probably  the  substance  of  that  should  be 
included,  —  utterly  untenable.  Similarly, 
under  this  same  theory  of  literal  and  verbal 
inspiration,  it  has  been  set  up  to  fight,  with 
proof-texts,  nearly  every  advance  in  a  pro- 
founder,  simpler,  truer  thought  of  God, 
which  has  been  suggested  since  Anselm  in 
the  eleventh  century,  —  positions  which,  in 
most  instances,  as  in  the  matter  of  astron- 
omy, of  geology,  and  of  glaciation,  have 
likewise  proved  untenable. 

Now  the  newer  religious  thinking  does  not 
want  the  Bible  to  be  subjected  any  longer 
to  such  humiliating  work.  It  is  good  for 
something  better  than  the  fighting  of  need- 
less and  losing  battles.  It  is  inspired,  the 
newer  religious  thinking  believes,  in  a  far 
nobler  way,  namely,  in  spirit  rather  than 
in  letter.  It  is  inspired  for  ends  spiritual, 
moral,   and   practical.     Holy  men   of    God, 


Its  Idea  of  the  Bible.  1 5  7 

"moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost,"  spake  in  it  "for 
teaching,  for  reproof,  for  correction,"  and 
"for  instruction  which  is  in  riorhteousness." 
In  the  matter  of  its  forewords,  of  the  order 
of  unfolding  in  the  life  of  Israel,  and  of  the 
New  Testament  documents,  —  in  fact,  in 
every  respect,  —  it  should  be  subjected  to 
the  same  criticism,  the  same  research,  and 
the  same  interpretation  as  any  literature. 

So  the  newer  religious  thinking  believes, 
and  of  this  it  is  not  afraid.  It  welcomes  all 
new  light.  Just  as  the  new  astronomy  and 
the  new  geology  have  vastly  expanded  and 
illuminated  the  human  mind,  so,  as  these 
studies  advance,  it  anticipates  that  the  new 
understanding  of  history,  and  the  true  ap- 
prehension of  the  order  and  meaning  of 
the  Bible  documents,  will  vastly  expand 
and  illuminate  the  human  soul.  When  the 
Bible  is  thus  freed,  when  it  is  stripped  of  a 
false  mediaeval  authority  and  clad  in  its  own 
pristine  authority  of  spirit  and  life,  it  be- 
comes, more  even  than  ever,  a  new  and  life- 
giving  book. 

And  that  it  is  an  inspired  book,  —  inspired 


158       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

by  the  same  Spirit  which  has  inspired  all 
other  literature,  and  has  inspired  you  and 
me,  but  inspired  in  a  more  conspicuous  and 
life-giving  degree  than  is  ordinarily  the  case 
with  literary  or  individual  inspiration,  —  the 
newer  religious  thinking  fully  believes.  The 
book  is  from  God.  Its  light  and  warmth  are 
eternal.  Side  by  side  it  stands  with  that 
other  book,  of  nature,  history,  life,  of  which  I 
spoke  last  Sunday  night.  Each  throws  light 
on  the  other.  Each  supplements  the  other. 
Between  them,  rightly  interpreted,  there  is 
no  schism.  Their  truth  is  one.  And  that 
truth,  it  is  given  you  and  me  reverently  to 
seek  after,  to  receive  into  our  hearts,  and  to 
make  the  lamp  of  our  feet,  and  the  light  of 
our  path. 


CHRIST    ITS    CENTRE. 


SYNOPSIS. 

Importance  of  indicating  the  fact  of  the  newer  relig- 
ious thinking.  —  Obedience  unto  the  heavenly  vision  its 
foremost  trait.  —  Its  other  characteristics  have  underlying 
them  the  principle  of  a  thoroughly  enlisted  intellect,  as  well 
as  of  a  thoroughly  stirred  heart ;  the  appeal,  in  short,  is  to 
the  whole  man.  —  This  true  even  of  the  practical  bent  of  the 
newer  religious  thinking  (illustrations).  —  Hunger  after  God 
and  passion  for  men  its  inspirations ;  their  fine  reciprocal  re- 
lation ;  their  image-breaking  but  pacific  purpose.  —  The 
world  Book  and  the  pen-and-ink  Book  its  material  to  work 
in  and  grow  by  ;  this  the  highest  application  of  the  inductive 
method ;  it  constitutes  an  epoch  in  religion.  —  Christ  its 
centre:  (i)  For  men  outside  the  faith;  in  what  sense; 
(2)  For  "Unevangelicals;  "  two  illustrations ;  (3)  For  conser- 
vative "  Evangelicals  "  (examples)  ;  (4)  For  hberal  "  Evan- 
gelicals "  (examples).  —  The  law  of  eternal  sacrifice.  —  This 
the  true  In  hoc  signo  vtnces.  —  This  is  not  getting  salvation, 
but  salvation  getting  us  ;  this  is  not  gaining  heaven,  but 
heaven  gaining  us.  —  This  the  divine  handwriting  on  the 
newer  religious  thinking.  —  There  is  only  one  thing  for  you 
and  me  to  do,  namely,  to  throw  ourselves  into  this  infinite 
Christ  principle. 


VI. 

CHRIST   ITS    CENTRE.i 

JV/io,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  counted  it  not  a  prize 
to  be  on  an  equality  with  God,  but  emptied  himself, 
taking  the  form  of  a  sefvant,  being  made  in  the  like- 
ness of  men  ;  a?id  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 
humbled  himself,  becoming  obedient  even  unto  death, 
yea,  the  death  of  the  cross.  Wherefore  also  God  highly 
exalted  him,  a7id  gave  unto  him  the  name  which  is 
above  every  name ;  that  in  the  name  of  Jesus  every 
knee  should  bow,  of  tlwigs  in  heaven  and  things  on 
earth  and  things  under  the  earth,  and  that  every 
tongue  should  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  to  the 
glory  of  God  the  Father.  —  Philippians  ii.  6-11. 

T  UNDERTOOK,  in  the  first  of  these  dis- 
^  courses,  to  indicate  the  fact  of  a  newer 
religious  thinking,  and  to  characterize  that 
thinking. 

It  is  important  to  indicate  the  fact,  —  not 
unduly,  not  out  of  proportion,  especially  not 

1  Prospect  Street,  Sunday  night,  December  18,  1892. 
Down  to  the  paragraph  beginning,  "It  is  to  this  point,  then, 
that  we  now  come,"  on  page  171,  I  have  substituted  a  differ- 


1 62       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 


in  neglect  of  much  else  of  large  importance, 
and,  particularly,  not  in  neglect  of  simple, 
every-day  duty,  thought,  and  devotion.  But, 
assuming  that  due  proportion  is  maintained, 
this  great,  present-day  fact  needs  making 
known.  The  ostrich,  hiding  her  head  in  the 
sand  upon  the  approach  of  peril,  is  not  a  wise 
bird.  Neither,  unless  in  appearance,  is  that 
bird  wise  which,  when  all  the  woodland  is 
carolling  the  glory  and  joy  of  the  dawn,  hides 
from  it  in  some  cleft  of  tree  or  of  rock.  To 
know  one's  time,  to  apprehend  its  perils  and 
possibilities,  to  feel  with  quick  and  tender 
sympathy  the  heart-throb  of  its  great  aspira- 
tions and  inspirations,  —  this  is  to  live.  Its 
contrary  is  to  fall  under  our  Saviour's  sur- 
prised and  pained  rebuke,  "  Ye  cannot  dis- 
cern the  signs  of  the  times." 

In  characterizing  the  newer  religious 
thinking  I  spoke  of  its  spring  in  "  heavenly 
vision,"  and  its  obedience  thereto.     That  is 

ent  opening  of  the  discourse  from  that  used  in  preaching  it. 
I  have  also  permitted  myself  an  anachronism  of  two  days  in 
the  illustration  taken  from  my  own  parish  on  pages  165  and 
166.  For  the  original  opening,  with  the  reasons  for  the 
transposition,  see  Appendix  B. 


Christ  its  Centre,  163 

its  most  important  trait.  No  prophet  of  old 
was  ever  more  truly  moved  of  God  than  the 
best  spirit  in  this  thinking.  And  the  very 
obloquy  which  it  is  sure  to  encounter,  chas- 
tens and  makes  higher  than  of  this  earth 
the  holy  resolution  with  which  it  presses  for- 
ward. I  can  only  repeat  what  I  stated  as  I 
drew  attention  to  the  point :  "  Let  no  man 
say,  or  even  imagine,  that  this  thinking  is 
other  than  inspired  by,  and  obedient  unto,  a 
'  heavenly  vision,'  which  ever  hovers  in  its 
foreground,  and  beckons  it  on." 

The  other  characteristics  which  I  named 
were  :  "  its  scientific  temper ;  "  "  its  practi- 
cal bent ;"  and  "  its  purpose  to  include  in  its 
concept  the  entire  religious  impulse  of  the 
world." 

One  principle  underlies  all  these.  It  is 
the  principle  of  a  thoroughly  enlisted  intel- 
lect, as  well  as  of  a  thoroughly  stirred  heart. 
This  is  the  glory  of  the  religion  of  the  new 
time.  It  appeals  to  the  whole  man.  There 
is  no  servility  of  a  half  or  two  thirds  of  the 
man  to  the  other  half  or  third. 

Take,  for  example,  what  might   seem  an 


164      The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

exception  to  this,  namely,  the  "practical 
bent  "  of  the  newer  thinking.  One  might 
point,  with  this  in  mind,  sneeringly  at  the 
thinking,  and  say,  "  It  may  do  for  professors 
and  essay-preachers,  but  practical  men  don't 
care  for  it."  But  he  would  have  reflected 
little  who  should  so  employ  this  trait.  The 
fact  is  that  many  of  the  most  practical  Chris- 
tians, to-day,  are  practical,  as  a  sheer  intel- 
lectual necessity.  They  cannot  abide  the 
idols  still  standing  upright  in  the  imagery 
chambers  of  traditional  theology.  Neither, 
on  the  other  hand,  can  they  give  up  their 
hold  on  God.  Therefore  they  turn,  almost 
desperately,  to  work.  Here  they  will  find, 
they  are  sure,  light.  "  If  any  man  willeth 
to  do  his  will,"  they  console  themselves,  "  he 
shall  know  of  the  teaching."  I  adduce  two 
illustrations  of  this. 

When  the  profoundest  theologian  of  our 
century,  Maurice,  was  spending  his  days  and 
nights  for  the  London  workingmen,  and 
in  that  work  discovered  Charles  Kingsley, 
Thomas  Hughes,  and  many  another,  it  was 
the  intellectual  necessity  of  something  prac- 


Christ  its  Centre.  165 

tical,  not  less  than  sympathy  for  the  men 
needing  help,  which  became  the  key  to  that 
remarkable  chapter  in  our  century's  history. 
This,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  this  alone, 
gave  Charles  Kingsley  and  Thomas  Hughes 
not  only  to  literature,  but  also  to  the  intel- 
lectual enrichment  of  our  century's  religious 
life. 

But  to  come  nearer  home.  There  listened 
eagerly  to  the  earlier  of  these  discourses  a 
physician,  second  to  few  in  this  Common- 
wealth as  a  general  practitioner,  who,  the 
last  two  nights  he  was  out,  spent  them  devis- 
ing ways  for  increasing  the  practical  efficiency 
of  this  church;  who,  with  pneumonia  upon 
him,  answered,  nevertheless,  a  night  call  the 
second  of  those  nights,  and  desired  to  start 
out  in  the  morning  ;  and  who,  ten  days  there- 
after, was  with  the  great  Physician.  His 
hands  and  his  heart  were  ever  full  of  all  sorts 
of  practical  helpfulness  to  men.  And  his 
last  testimony  in  our  meetings  was  in  a  vein 
of  rejoicing  that  creed-wars  were  waning,  and 
that  the  Christian  Church  was  getting  to 
work.     And  what  was  he  1     A  man  of  deep- 


1 66       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

est,  tenderest  sympathies  ?  Yes ;  but  also 
a  man  of  doubts,  questionings,  perplexities, 
who  at  once  conquered  them,  used  them, 
and  became  a  humble  servant  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  through  practical  work.^ 

The  practical  bent,  then,  as  well  as  the 
scientific  temper,  and  the  purpose  to  com- 
prehend and  utilize  the  truer  impulses  of  all 
religions,  noticeable  as  traits  of  the  newer 
religious  thinking,  indicate,  all  of  them,  as 
I  said,  the  thoroughly  enlisted  intellect,  as 
well  as  the  thoroughly  stirred  heart.  The 
whole  man,  in  short,  is  coming  to  the  front 
in  religion.  Is  not  this  significant?  Does  it 
not  betoken  a  new  time?  Ought  it  not  to 
make  our  hearts  sing? 

But  the  measure  of  a  movement  is  in  its 
inspirations.  We  saw  the  fact  and  some 
traits  of  the  newer  religious  thinking  in  the 
first  discourse.  It  was  in  the  second  and 
third  that  we  saw  what  its  inspirations  are. 
They  are  the  highest,  the  noblest,  —  hunger 
afler  God,  and  passion  for  men.     Not  since 

1  Dea.  David  Marks  Edgerly,  M.  D.,  truly  a  "  beloved  phy- 
sician."    Born,  August  ii,  1839;  died,  December  20,  1892. 


Christ  its  Centre,  167 

Christ  was  in  the  flesh  has  a  movement  in 
reHgious  thought  been  more  thoroughly  im- 
bued with  either  of  these  impulses ;  and  the 
most  blessed  aspect  of  the  present  move- 
ment is  that  they  are  in  such  fine  balance, 
each  equally  present,  and  each  giving  sym- 
metry and  glory  to  the  other. 

We  saw,  also,  how  these  impulses  lead 
inevitably  to  a  certain  image-breaking,  in 
Godward  and  manward  theology  not  only, 
but  also  in  the  life  of  society.  For  the  "  stone 
cut  out  of  the  mountain  without  hands  "  is 
to  "  break  in  pieces  and  consume  "  not  only 
the  image  of  Nebuchadnezzar's  dream,  but 
all  images.  It  has  not  come  "  to  send  peace, 
but  a  sword."  It  ought  not,  however,  to  be 
thought  of  as  a  conquest,  but  as,  the  rather, 
a  measureless  love,  with  its  end  peace. 
Happy  will  it  be  for  us  if  we  shall  capitu- 
late with  it  early. 

Having  these  noble  and  so  reciprocal  in- 
spirations, and  this  at  once  destructive  and 
constructive  work  in  hand,  has  the  newer 
religious  thinking  adequate  material  to  work 
in  and  grow  by,  or  is  it  a  kind  of  wild  pas- 


1 68        The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

slon  of  the  age,  like  the  crusades,  which 
were  utterly  barren,  except  in  their  indirect 
results  ?  You  remember  how  the  wise  Ar- 
thur deprecated  for  most  of  his  knights  the 
quest  of  the   Holy  Grail :  — 

''  Go,  since  your  vows  are  sacred,  being  made  : 
Yet  —  for  ye  know  the  cries  of  all  my  realm 
Pass  through  this  hall  —  how  often,  O  my  knights, 
Your  places  being  vacant  at  my  side, 
This  chance  of  noble  deeds  will  come  and  go 
Unchallenged,  while  ye  follow  wandering  fires 
Lost  in  the  quagmire  !     Many  of  you,  yea  most, 
Return  no  more." 

Is  the  newer  religious  thinking  such  a  quest, 
or  has  it  adequate  material  to  work  in  and 
grow  by  ? 

The  fourth  and  fifth  discourses  afforded 
us  the  answer  to  this  most  serious  question. 
We  saw  that  the  unique  distinction  of  the 
newer  religious  thinking  of  the  present  is  its 
being  set  to  read  two  books,  not  one  ;  to  listen 
to  the  whole  oracle,  not  to  a  part  of  it. 
Whereas,  before,  mainly  only  one  book  has 
been  read,  and  only  one  philosophical  method 
followed,  namely,  deduction,  we  saw  that  in- 


Christ  its  Ce^itre,  169 

duction  is  now  to  take  its  appropriate  place 
along  with  deduction  in  the  work  of  this 
thinking,  and  that  that  other  God's  Book, 
nature,  history,  life,  or,  in  one  word,  the 
world,  is  now  to  be  laid  side  by  side  with  the 
pen-and-ink  Book,  the  Bible,  and  each  made 
to  interpret  the  other. 

This  change  in  philosophical  method ; 
this  recognition  of  the  larger  handwriting 
of  God,  — 

"  And  Nature,  the  old  nurse,  took 
The  child  upon  her  knee, 
Saying  :   *  Here  is  a  story-book 
Thy  Father  has  written  for  thee.' 

"  '■  Come,  wander  with  me,'  she  said, 
*  Into  regions  yet  untrod; 
And  read  what  is  still  unread 
In  the  manuscripts  of  God  ;  '  "  1 

this  sublime  purpose  to  find  God  in  his 
whole  universe,  and  to  let  him  speak  to  men 
out  of  his  whole  universe ;  and  this  arduous 
task  of  rethinking  everything  into  the  larger 
terms  of  God  as  so  manifested,  —  constitute 
an    epoch   in    religion   not   less    momentous 

i  Longfellow,  "  The  Fiftieth  Birthday  of  Agassiz." 


1 70       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

than  was  constituted  for  science  when  it 
gave  itself  to  the  Baconian  method.  In  fact 
it  is  that  method,  given  its  highest  applica- 
tion. The  other  method  in  religion,  in  point 
of  fact,  was  too  often  only  a  kind  of  quest 
of  the  Holy  Grail,  following  "  wandering  fires 
lost  in  the  quagmire."  Employing  this  better 
method  the  quest  is  becoming  substantial  and 
real,  with  promise  of  results  more  reasonable 
and  permanent. 

Thus,  from  the  indicating  and  character- 
izing, through  the  splendid  inspirations  and 
tasks,  and  then  through  the  new  and  mag- 
nificent material  and  method,  we  are  come, 
for  the  newer  religious  thinking,  to  this 
crucial  inquiry  :  What  is  its  centre  ?  Indeed, 
has  it  a  centre  ?  Is  there  any  Arthur,  in  his 
Hall  of  Camelot^  (for  this  seems  the  mean- 

1  This  was  how  Camelot  looked  as  men  approached  it, 
eluding  and  yet  winning  them,  and  drawing  them  within 
itself : — 

"  Far  off  they  saw  the  silver-misty  morn 
Rolling  her  smoke  about  the  Royal  mount, 
That  rose  between  the  forest  and  the  field. 
At  times  the  summit  of  the  high  city  flashed ; 
At  times  the  spires  and  turrets  half-way  down 
Pricked  through  the  mist ;  at  times  the  great  gate  shone 
Only,  that  opened  on  the  field  below  :  .  .  . 
And  there  was  no  gate  like  it  under  heaven." 


Christ  its  Centre,  171 

ing  of  the  "  Idyls  "),  for  it  ever  to  come  back 
to,  and  ever  to  start  out  afresh  from,  and 
ever  to  live  under  the  vow  of? 

Blessed  be  God,  there  is  !  It  is  that  mys- 
terious Person,  of  whom  the  mystery  of 
Arthur's  "  Coming,"  and  "  Passing,"  and 
wondrous  defeated  and  yet  triumphing  life, 
seems  to  be  speaking  to  us.  And  we  grossly 
wrong  the  mystery,  —  mysterious  from  any 
point  of  view,  —  if  we  seek  too  deeply  to 
penetrate,  or  too  precisely  to  define  that  Per- 
son. That  was  how  they  treated  Arthur,  — 
some  denying  that  he  was  what  he  claimed 
to  be ;  others  maintaining  that  he  was  more 
than  he  claimed  to  be ;  none  compassing  his 
practical  meaning  for  life  ;  and  even  his  last 
knisht  fain  to  deceive  him  in  the  matter 
of  his  dying  request.  Ah!  what  an  epic 
is  that  of  Tennyson's!  Would  it  might 
teach    us  ! 

It  is  to  this  point,  then,  that  we  now  come 
in  closing ;  namely,  to  note  that  Christ  is  the 
centre  of  this  movement. 

I.  I  wish  to  indicate  this,  first,  in  regard 
to  many  men  outside  the  Church  altogether, 


172       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

the  earnest  doubters  and  unbelievers,  who, 
as  we  saw  in  the  first  discourse,  are  also  in 
a  movement,  an  advance,  which  differen- 
tiates them  from  the  like  type  in  earlier 
periods,  so  that  the  true  men  among  them 
are  more  earnest  and  reverent,  and  are 
pained  not  to  believe. 

We  are  told  that,  as  Jesus  hung  upon  the 
cross,  it  was  where  many  passed,  and  that 
they  looked  on  him,  and  that  some,  even 
amonsf  those  farthest  from  the  faith,  were 
touched;  for  example,  the  Centurion.  I 
should  like  to  follow  the  lives  of  those  who 
saw  him,  and  observe  if  they  were  not  per- 
manently affected  by  the  sight.  Christ  said 
he  would,  if  lifted  up,  draw  all  men  unto  him. 
I  wonder  if  this  saying  of  his  did  not  begin 
to  be  fulfilled  while  he  hung  there  on  the 
cross.  It  is  so,  at  any  rate,  with  the  men 
of  whom  we  are  now  thinking.  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  whom  they  do  not  confess  to  be 
Jesus  also  of  the  skies,  has  his  hold  on  them. 
Of  course  it  is  not  just  the  hold  he  has,  I 
hope,  on  you  and  me.  Would  God  it  were 
an  ampler  hold  on  them ;    yes,  and    on   us, 


Christ  its  Centre,  173 

likewise  !  But,  of  its  kind,  it  is  as  real  as 
on  you  and  me,  —  if  not  as  adequate,  at  any 
rate  as  real.     Let  us  see  how  this  is. 

There  have  been  certain  figures  in  history 
from  which  the  world  never  has  been  able  to 
get  away.  One  of  them  is  composite,  the 
figure  of  the  old  Greek  life,  shown  us  by 
wonderful  Homer.  Whatever  person,  and 
whatever  civilization,  has  beheld  this  com- 
posite portrayal  of  antique  life,  will  never  be 
the  same,  after  the  sight,  as  before.  So,  too, 
specifically,  of  the  figure  of  Socrates,  or  the 
figure  of  Dante,  or  the  figure  of  Martin 
Luther,  or  the  figure  of  William  the  Silent, 
or  the  figure  of  Shakespeare. 

Now  like  these,  only  vastly  deeper,  more 
acute,  more  potent  in  influence,  more  con- 
structive of  life,  is  the  figure  of  Jesus,  with 
these  men.  Homer  gives  a  composite,  uni- 
versal expression  of  the  antique ;  Socrates,  of 
the  moral,  —  of  truth-seeking,  inward-voice- 
obeying,  spiritual  intelligence  ;  Dante,  of 
lofty  spirit,  betwixt  the  old  world  and  the 
new;  Luther,  of  the  Germanic  impulse,  and 
of    its    emancipation    into    spiritual  liberty; 


1 74       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

William  the  Silent,  of  the  spirit  of  tolerance 
and  freedom  and  comprehension ;  Shake- 
speare, of  the  heart  of  man  In  all  time. 

But  not  one  of  these  approaches  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  figure  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  nor  do 
all  of  them.  There  he  Is.  There  he  depends 
from  the  cross.  One  cannot  say  ancient  or 
modern  of  him,  for  he  Is  of  all  time,  as  ap- 
propriate to  Homer's  age  as  to  the  age  of 
Augustus,  as  appropriate  to  the  age  of  Vic- 
toria as  to  the  age  of  Dante  ;  In  fact,  dateless, 
timeless,  a  being  belonging  to  the  forever. 
One  cannot  associate  hlmi  with  Socrates,  for 
he  Is  morally  much  vaster  than  Socrates  ;  nor 
with  Luther  or  William,  for  they  are  only 
tapers  from  him  ;  nor  with  Shakespeare,  for 
he  knows  all  that  Shakespeare  knows,  is 
vastly  more  universal,  being  Semitic  as  well 
as  Indo-European,  and,  where  Shakespeare 
gropes  In  the  dark,  as  in  the  Sonnets,  he  is 
all  light,  as  in  the  fourteenth  to  the  seven- 
teenth of  Saint  John. 

Now  this  universal  figure,  this  Man  of 
sorrows  depending  from  the  cross,  Is  there, 
—  there  and  unremovable ;  and,  being  now 


Christ  its  Centre. 


1/5 


universally  diffused  abroad,  through  the  lives 
of  him,  the  comments  on  him,  the  universal 
impression  of  him,  he  is  swaying  these  men, 
—  swaying  them  by  the  power  of  his  tran- 
scendent character,  his  unequalled  sayings, 
and  the  tout-ensemble  of  his  personality.  To 
his  thoughts  these  men  bow.  To  his  con- 
ceptions they  more  and  more  adapt  their 
lives.  He  has  softened  their  scoffing.  He 
has  made  them  tender  and  earnest.  They 
do  not  acknowledge,  as  we  do,  his  Deity, 
but  they  bend  to  his  character. 

And  thus  it  comes  about,  in  peoples  that 
know  Christ,  even  though  many  among  them 
are  ungodly,  that  the  Christ-thought  gets  the 
upper  hand  ;  that  complicated  elections  sim- 
plify themselves  ;  that  an  aroused  public 
conscience  registers  the  verdict  of  the  Lord 
Jesus;  that  great  tyrannies  fall  down;  that 
ereat  wars  come  to  the  rig^ht  end  ;  and  that 
the  King  of  kings,  in  the  person  of  our 
Lord,  goes  forth  to  every  conflict  with 
no  uncertainty  what  the  ultimate  outcome 
will  be. 

It  would  be  easy  to  establish  what  I  have 


176       The  Newer  Religions  Thinking. 

affirmed  from  the  sayings  of  men  of  this  type, 
but  I  have  enough  suggested  the  proof.  Of 
the  truer  spirit  outside  the  faith,  Christ  is  the 
centre.  Already  it  is  under  his  resistless 
eye.  Already  it  swings,  however  unwit- 
tingly, to  his  bidding. 

2.  The  same  is  true,  with  augmented 
force,  of  those  in  the  Church,  but  outside 
so-called  "  evangelical  "  lines.  And  the  aug- 
mented force  lies  in  this,  that,  while,  in 
distinction  from  you  and  me,  they  deny  the 
true  Deity  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  they  regard 
him  as  very  specially  related  to  God. 

In  him,  they  say,  God  has  most  perfectly 
manifested  himself.  There  is  a  divine  mys- 
tery, they  affirm,  about  this  wonderful  being. 
Him  they  count  their  Saviour,  their  leader, 
their  glorious  exemplar.  They  do  not  go  as 
far  as  we.  We  are  sorry  they  do  not.  But 
they  go  a  good  distance.  They  accept  him 
as  Master.  He  marshals  them.  He  directs 
them.  Now  these  men,  as  I  have  earlier 
pointed  out,  are  in  one  section  of  the  newer 
religious  thinking ;  and,  in  their  newer 
thought,  Christ    is  central,  —  his  character, 


Christ  its  Centre,  177 


his  way  of  helping  men,  his  simplicity,  his 
incisiveness,  his  lofty  and  tender  spirit.  If 
afar  off,  as  some  of  us  would  say,  they  never- 
theless follow  Jesus.  Yes,  and  perchance, 
many  a  time,  nearer  than  we. 

I  have  met  personally  with  two  affecting 
illustrations  of  this  within  a  few  days.  A 
young  minister  of  a  "  non-evangelical  "  body, 
consuming  with  zeal,  love,  service,  introduced 
me  to  an  aged  parishioner  of  his,  and  left  us 
together.  Then  began  this  old  man  to  testify, 
almost  with  tears,  to  what  this  young  man 
was  doino-  for  him  and  for  his  church.  "  We 
never  had,"  he  said,  "  such  a  minister.  There 
was  never  a  minister  that  did  so  much  for 
me."  Why  ?  I  knew  why.  He  never  had 
had  a  minister  who  so  completely,  however 
defective  his  doctrine,  lived  as  in  the  pres- 
ence and  power  of  the  Lord  Jesus. 

The  other  illustration  was  in  a  well- 
stocked  private  library.  I  took  down  a 
book  bearing  on  the  life  of  the  Lord  Jesus. 
Struck  by  it,  I  asked  my  host  what  he  knew 
of  its  author.  "  He  is  an  Englishman," 
replied    my    friend,    " '  non-evangelical,'    an 


12 


178       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

advanced  man.  I  visited  him  when  I  was 
abroad.  He  is  a  great  scholar,  a  great 
thinker,  but,  like  Martineau,  most  devout. 
His  home  suggests  an  oratory,  redolent  of 
sanctity  and  prayer." 

Here,  then,  were  a  young  Nevv^  England 
pastor,  of  one  "  non-evangelical "  denomina- 
tion, and  a  great  English  scholar  of  another, 
the  doctrinal  deficiencies  of  both  of  whom 
you  and  I  would  regret;  but  both  of  whom 
were  not  only  under  the  general  moral  influ- 
ence, as  in  the  case  of  men  outside  the  faith, 
but  also  under  the  personal  and  spiritual 
power  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  The  exam- 
ples are  typical.  They  suggest,  out  of  life, 
my  point.-^ 

3.  Without  going  into  other  divisions  of 
the  Church,  I  come  now  to  "  Evangelicals," 
such  as  we.     And,  first,  those  of  them  who 

1  One  has  only  to  think  of  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  the 
author  of  "In  His  Name,"  and  of  Dr.  Andrew  P.  Peabody 
(passed  on  March  10,  1893),  who  was  as  devout  and  tender  a 
disciple  as  the  Saint  John  he  loved  so  well,  to  understand 
how  truly  Christian,  in  the  New  Testament  sense  of  that 
word,  are  multitudes  whom  those  who  claim  to  be  more  ac- 
ceptable Christians  than  they,  have  so  far  forgotten  the  spirit 
of  Christ  as  to  pronounce  "unevangelical."  (Seepp.  208, 209.) 


Christ  its  Centre.  179 

have  little  responsiveness  to  the  freshened 
religious'thinking  of  our  time. 

Conservatives,  we  should  call  them.  But 
some  of  them  are,  along  practical  lines, 
mightily  parts  of  a  progressive  movement. 
The  dead  Spurgeon  Is  an  example.  Very 
conservative  In  theory,  In  practical  directions 
he  v^as  radical, — pushing  for  new  methods, 
new  appliances,  new  Instrumentalities,  build- 
ing up  his  great  Metropolitan  Temple  work, 
his  Lay  College,  his  Orphanage,  etc.  The 
living  General  Booth,  of  the  Salvation  Army, 
is  another  example.  Book  after  book  falls 
from  his  pen.  The  drum-beat  of  the  army 
associated  with  his  name,  like  the  drum-beat 
of  the  army  of  England,  follows  the  rising 
sun  around  the  world.  Dwight  L.  Moody 
Is  another  example,  —  fearless,  hospitable, 
asking  Professor  (now  President)  Harper, 
who  so  much  disturbs  some  people  about 
the  Old  Testament,  to  speak  at  his  Sum- 
mer School. 

Conservative  men  are  all  these,  and 
many  another,  yet  advancing  men  ;  mainly 
advancing  In  practical  directions,  it  is  true. 


i8o       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking. 

but  parts  of  the  great  world  movement. 
Need  I  ask  who  inspires  them ;  who  is 
central  to  their  progress ;  who  is  the 
Leader,  Captain,  All-in-AU  of  the  Spur- 
geons,  Booths,  Moodys,  and  those  of  like 
temper,  in  the  great  marching  army  of 
Christian  workers  of  this  type  ?  It  is  he 
with  the  thorn-marks  in  his  brow,  the  nail- 
prints  in  his  hands,  the  spear-thrust  in  his 
side. 

4.  And  next,  and  finally,  we  come  to  those 
members  of  "  evangelical  "  bodies,  to  whom 
I  have  made  repeated  reference,  who,  in  in- 
tellectual as  well  as  practical  lines,  are  parts 
of  the  newer  religious  thinking. 

They  are  the  Coleridges,  the  Arnolds, 
the  Robertsons,  the  Maurices,  the  Kingsleys, 
the  Bushnells,  among  the  dead.  They  are  the 
Farrars,  the  Phillips  Brookses,^  the  Heber 
Newtons,  the  T.  T.  Mungers,  the  Wash- 
ington Gladdens,  the  Lyman  Abbotts,  the 
Egbert  C.  Smyths,  among  the  living.     They 

1  Dead,  alas !  January  23,  1893.  But  never  so  alive  as 
now,  on  the  earth  as  well  as  in  heaven.  "  It  is  expedient  for 
you  that  I  go  away." 


Christ  its  Ce^itre,  i8i 

are,  at  once  as  practical  men  and  as  intel- 
lectual men,  in  the  newer  religious  thinking. 
They  have  their  faults,  perchance  their  errors. 
But  to  their  voices  the  voice  of  the  souls  of 
sinning,  fallen,  needy  humanity  responds. 

And  there  is  but  one  centre  to  their  think- 
ing and  their  work,  —  namely,  the  Crucified 
One.  Believing  that  he  was  in  the  form  of 
God,  but  counted  it  not  a  thing  to  grasp 
after  to  hold  equality  with  God,  but,  the 
rather,  emptied  himself,  took  the  form  of  a 
servant,  was  made  in  the  likeness  of  men, 
humbled  himself,  and  became  obedient  to 
death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross,  —  they 
hold  him  therein  to  have  impersonated,  as 
in  no  other  way  it  could  be  done,  the  great 
heart  of  God ;  and  that  therefore,  not  so 
much  because  he  was  God,  though  he  w^as 
God,  but  because  in  flesh  and  blood  he 
embodied  the  infinitely  sacrificial  heart  of 
God,  "  God  highly  exalted  him,  and  gave 
unto  him  the  name  which  is  above  every 
name ; "  and  "  that  In  the  name  of  Jesus 
every  knee"  shall  "bow,  of  things  in  heaven 
and    things  on  earth  and  things   under  the 


1 82       The  Newer  Religious  Thinking, 

earth,  and  that  every  tongue "  shall  "  con- 
fess that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  to  the  glory 
of  God  the  Father." 

This  is  their  conviction,  this  their  faith, 
this  their  inspiration.  Along  this  line  they 
are  moving.  God  is  God,  they  believe,  and 
Christ  is  God,  not  so  much  because  they 
are  God,  though  they  are  that,  but  because 
they  are  God-like,  —  self-emptying,  sacrificial, 
spending  and  being  spent  for  others,  for 
men,  and  for  the  spirits  above  and  beyond 
men.  Here  they  see  God  resting  his  high- 
est claim,  and  Christ  his  highest,  not  in 
Deity  per  se,  though  they  are  that,  but  in 
God-like  love,  sacrifice,  self-emptying. 

A  universe  could  not  be  called  into  being, 
these  men  remember,  without  infinite  suffer- 
ing. This  infinite  suffering,  God,  —  this 
infinite  suffering,  Christ,  —  these  men  re- 
member, was  ready  to  undergo,  and  thus  to 
be,  as  it  were,  "  slain  from  the  foundation  of 
the  world."  Human  beings,  and  other  spir- 
itual existences,  could  not  be  called  into 
being  —  any  more  than  the  coming  into 
being  of  a  family  of  children  is  possible  — 


Christ  its  Centre, 


without  immense  suffering,  and  immense 
sin  as  the  sequel.  These,  too,  God,  —  these, 
too,  Christ, —  was  wilHng  to  undergo  and 
endure.  This  self-emptying  and  self-forget- 
ting —  as  is  slightly  suggested  by  the  self- 
emptying  and  self-forgetting  of  a  parent  — 
did  God,  and  especially  God  in  Christ, 
make  the  law  of  the  Divine  Beins:.  There- 
fore,  by  highest  right,  God  is  God ;  therefore 
Christ  is  highly  exalted,  and  given  "the 
name  which   is  above  every  name." 

Do  you  catch  the  thought }  Do  you  see 
how  far-reaching  it  is  }  "  God  is  love." 
"  God  so  loved  the  world."  God's  claim  is 
based  there.  God's  command  of  us  is  ful- 
crumed  there.  Not  on  sovereignty,  though 
there  is  sovereignty  enough ;  not  on  law, 
though  there  is  law  enough  ;  not  on  right, 
though  there  is  right  enough  ;  not  on  jus- 
tice, though  God  Is  just;  but  on  love,  —  the 
love  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  sacrifice,  pene- 
trating the  world,  pervading  it,  conquering 
it,  lowering  its  proud  look,  bringing  down  its 
lofty  head,  turning  it  as  the  rivers  of  water 
are  turned.     Love   Is  the  clew ;  love  Is  the 


1 84       The  Newer  ReligioMS  Thinking, 

key,  —  and  love  running  through  everything: 
through  nature,  making  it  sacred ;  through 
history,  hallowing  it ;  through  life,  imparting 
to  it  a  new  meaning,  so  that  light  comes, 
freedom  comes,  growth  comes,  yea,  the  new 
heavens  and  new  earth,  wherein  dwelleth 
righteousness. 

Constantine,  on  the  eve  of  battle,  seemed, 
as  everybody  knows,  to  see  in  the  sky  a 
cross,  and  the  legend,  "  In  this  symbol  con- 
quer."^ In  it  he  did  conquer.  But  little  did 
he  guess,  or  did  the  Church  of  his  age,  or  of 
the  succeeding  ages,  guess  the  full  import 
of  the  symbol.  The  full  import  is  the  eternal 
sacrifice  in  the  heart  of  God.  Of  this  im- 
port our  age,  enabled  thereto  by  its  mighty 
enlargings  on  every  side,  is,  for  the  first 
time,  getting  some  adequate  glimpses.  To 
its  power  this  age  is  bending,  —  love,  the 
cross,  the  infinite  sacrifice  in  the  heart  of 
God,  emulated  in  the  hearts,  the  thoughts, 
the  lives  of  men.  And,  as  if  it  blazed 
before  the  sight  of  men  in  every  sky,  it  is 
saying,  "  In  this  symbol  conquer,"  —  breaking 
down    all    oppressions,    righting   all   wrongs, 

^  Strictly,  "  thou  shalt  conquer." 


Christ  its  Centre.  185 

bettering  steadily  a  world  so  in  need  of  bet- 
terment, lifting  life  into  higher  thoughts, 
nobler  ideals,  loftier  conceptions,  more  ade- 
quate realizations  and  completions,  under 
the  lead  of  the  Crucified,  —  he  the  centre, 
he  highly  exalted,  and,  in  some  sense,  all 
knees  bent  to  him,  and  all  tongues  confess- 
ing him. 

This  is  more  than  getting  salvation,  though 
it  is  salvation.  It  is  salvation  getting  us. 
This  is  more  than  gaining  heaven,  though  it 
gains  heaven.  It  is  heaven  gaining  us,  — 
gaining  us  over  to  its  ruling  idea,  filling  us 
with  it,  transfiguring  us  by  it,  and  making 
it  to  be  true  that  we,  his  servants,  both  here 
and  there,  serve  him,  and  have  his  name  in 
our  foreheads. 

Here  it  is  that  the  newer  religious  think- 
ing, —  not  mine,  not  yours,  not  any  man's, 
not  perfect  either,  but  still  faulty  and  inad- 
equate enough,  —  along  the  pathway  of  which 
God  is  leading  the  world,  and  of  which  I 
have  sought  to  say  something  to  you  these 
closing  Sunday  nights  of  the  year,  shows 
upon  it  the  divine  handwriting,  being  from 


1 86       The  Newer  Re ligio2is  Thinking. 


Christ,    and    centred    in    him,    and    moving 
toward    him. 

And  there  is  only  one  thing  for  you  and 
me  to  do,  —  a  thing  which,  at  the  best,  we 
never  have  enough  done  yet,  —  namely,  to 
throw  ourselves  into  this  infinite  Christ  prin- 
ciple, into  this  infinite  law  of  the  spiritual 
kingdom,  into  this  divine  imperative  of  the 
universe,  and  to  become  the  very  children 
and  personal  presentments  of  the  cross. 
He  who  therefrom  depends,  leads,  and  ever 
will  lead,  turning  and  overturning,  conquer- 
ing and  to  conquer,  and  renewing  evermore 
—  even  as  it  is  written,  "  Behold,  I  make  all 
things  new "  —  thought,  feeling,  life,  yea, 
even  you  and  me.  To  him  be  the  glory, 
both  now  and  forever.     Amen. 


APPENDIX    A. 
ONE    TYPE    OF    NATURE    TEACHING. 


NOTE. 

At  the  point  in  Discourse  IV.  (page  124)  whence  reference  is 
made  to  Appendix  A,  I  have  spoken  not  only  of  the  testifying 
power  of  nature  indirectly  and  in  general  ways,  but  of  its  more 
direct  voice.  What,  it  was  asked,  are  those  impulses  of  peoples, 
those  movements  of  them,  those  peculiarities  which  give  them 
each,  as  it  were,  a  vocation  and  a  distinctive  message  for  the 
world?  "All  these,"  as  was  there  said,  "have  a  place  in  that 
revelation  of  God  which  the  world  is." 

To  illustrate  this  subject  in  a  single  direction,  I  append  the 
closing  observations  in  an  address  of  mine  before  the  New  Eng- 
land Water  Works  Association,  given  in  Boston,  December  12, 
1888,  entitled  "  Water  in  Some  of  its  Higher  Relations,"  and 
printed  in  the  Association's  "Journal"  for  March,  1889.  The 
last  paragraph,  not  in  the  address,  but  added  as  a  note  when  it 
was  printed,  is  here  brought  into  the  text. 

Nature  being  of  God  not  only,  but  God  being  in  nature,  and 
speaking  through  it,  when  shall  that  great  heresy  be  arrested  by 
which  the  two  are  put  in  antithesis,  and  by  which  nature  is  so 
demeaned  as  at  best  only  now  and  then  to  be  summoned  into 
court  "  evidentially  "  ?  When  shall  its  holy  voice  on  all  sides  of 
us  be  simply  and  livingly  heard  ?  Children  so  hear  it,  —  "  the 
greatest  in  the  Kingdom  of  heaven."  So  do  the  poets,  —  suc- 
ceeding, as  they  know  how  to,  in  remaining  children  always.  We 
must  come  to  their  place,  or  miss  much  of  the  sweetness,  depth, 
and  glory  of  God. 


ONE  TYPE   OF  NATURE  TEACHING. 

IF  this  seems  fanciful  to  you,  this  mighty  impulse 
of  descending  streams,  of  great  rivers,  of  spark- 
ling archipelagoes,  and  of  bordering  seas,  in  giving 
a  type  to  national  life,  and  in  helping  set  forward 
world-historical  movements,  I  ask  you  to  think  of 
two  or  three  more  modern  instances. 

What,  then,  let  me  ask,  was  the  Anglo-Saxon 
fatherland?  It  was  Teutonic.  Why,  then,  do  our 
brothers  of  Germany,  and  of  the  Low  Countries, 
stay  mainly  on  their  own  soil,  or  colonize  only 
feebly,  while  we  ourselves,  having  been  first  trans- 
ferred to  the  mother  Islands,  have  colonized  the 
world,  are  erecting  mighty  nationalities  on  three 
continents,  and  are  giving  to  the  whole  world  our 
institutions  and  our  speech?  Before  you  answer 
this  question  I  ask  you  to  sail  along  the  shores 
of  the  Continent,  opposite  Great  Britain ;  to  note 
that  there  is  hardly  a  respectable  natural  harbor 
on  the  French  coast;  to  note  how  remote  and 
difficult  of  access  are  the  better  harbors  of  the 
North  Sea  and  of  the  Baltic;    and  then,  crossing 


1 90  Appen  dix  A . 


the  Channel,  to  observe  that  our  mother  Islands 
are  fairly  fringed  with  bays,  inlets,  safe  harbors, 
and  inviting  river  mouths.  Sail  up  the  Irish  coast, 
for  example,  with  this  distinction  in  mind.  The 
whole  coast  configuration,  the  whole  maritime 
quality  of  these  islands,  were  a  perpetual  predis- 
position to  the  sea,  to  its  hardy  employments,  to 
its  openness  of  mind,  to  its  far-reaching  adventure. 
Water,  and  the  water  impulse  and  opportunity,  are 
the  answer,  physically,  to  the  question  why  the 
Anglo-Saxon  civilization,  which,  indeed,  had  within 
itself  elements  mightily  adapted  to  the  same  end, 
is  erecting  great  nationalities  on  three  continents, 
and  is  imparting  its  spirit  to  the  world. 

But  let  us  keep  within  the  lifetime  of  our  own 
generation.  Go  back,  in  our  own  country,  to  i860. 
Why  was  it,  in  all  the  stress  and  conflicting  senti- 
ment of  that  stormy  period,  that  North  and  South 
did  not  separate,  like  Abram  and  Lot  dividing  the 
land?  One  great  reason,  one  conclusive  practical 
reason,  one  unanswerable  argument  to  multitudes 
who  would  not  have  stood  upon  theory,  was  the 
simple  natural  fact  that  a  mighty  river  coursed 
from  north  to  south  through  the  alienated  sec- 
tions ;  that  the  natural  flow  of  waters,  and  the 
natural  dip  of  water-sheds,  pointed  out  that  this 
ought  to  be  one  land,  not  two ;  and  that  it  was 
impracticable  for  it  to  maintain  itself  as  two. 


One  Type  of  Nature  Teaching.        191 

Or  go  back  to  1870.  There  is  a  magnificent 
river,  almost  a  second  Rhine,  descending  from  the 
southwest  by  a  northeasterly  course  to  the  Rhine, 
and  joining  it  at  Coblenz,  namely,  the  Moselle. 
The  two  streams  are,  for  all  practical  purposes, 
one.  The  country  drained  by  them  is  the  same  in 
character.  The  Moselle  belonged  within  the  old 
German  frontier.  All  the  Rhine  love  was  shared 
by  it.  But  France  had  claimed  and  held  the 
Moselle.  The  struggle  of  1870  came.  Then 
the  old  river  passion  awoke.  That  fair  valley  was 
wrested  back.  In  the  great  German  national 
monument,  far  up  on  the  heights  overlooking  the 
Rhine  at  Bingen,  where  colossal  bronzes  have  been 
erected  as  a  memorial  of  the  uprising  and  uni- 
fication of  the  German  peoples  in  that  war,  one 
member  of  the  group  is  a  figure  representing  the 
Moselle,  won  back  to  its  sisterhood  with  the  Rhine. 
But  the  river  love  and  the  river  spirit,  expressed 
thus  in  bronze,  were  even  realer  and  more  con- 
structive than  the  statue  indicates  in  that  fierce 
national  struggle. 

The  final  higher  relation  of  water  which  I  men- 
tion is  one  difficult  to  be  defined,  and  of  which 
I  can  take  time  to  give  only  two  illustrations ;  but 
it  is  as  real  and  mighty  as  any  of  the  others. 
I  refer  to  the  power  of  water  on  the  human  imagi- 
nation.    And  I  think  I  need  hardly  contend,  before 


192  Appendix  A. 


a  company  as  intelligent  as  this,  that  genuine 
and  profound  influences  on  the  imagination  are 
among  the  most  powerful  springs  of  human 
conduct. 

I  ask  you,  then,  first,  to  think  of  the  Arthurian 
legends.  There  is  a  great  mass  of  them.  Their 
principal  home  is  the  British  Isles.  Their  con- 
structive thought  is,  the  reappearance  of  Arthur, 
in  the  ages  to  come,  to  bring  in  days  better  even 
than  the  old  days  of  that  king  and  of  his  Table 
Round.  They  have  been  cast  into  perhaps  their 
best  practical,  as  certainly  into  their  most  poetic, 
form  in  Tennyson's  "  Idyls  of  the  King."  Any 
one  who  has  studied  them,  and  who  is  at  all 
familiar  with  the  spirit  of  Anglo-Saxon  history, 
will,  I  think,  admit,  that  they  well  typify  the  best 
movements  of  that  history ;  that  they  are  true  race 
legends ;  and  that  much  of  their  promise  bids  fair 
yet  to  be  practically  fulfilled.  Now  the  point 
which  I  ask  you  to  notice  is,  the  play  of  springs, 
waters,  and  inland  lakes  in  them.  They  are  water 
and  insular  legends.  Their  delicacy,  their  purity, 
their  freshness,  their  promise,  their  sense  of  mys- 
tery and  of  fate,  their  sense,  too,  of  goodness,  of 
trust,  and  of  love,  are  water  born.  They  are 
genuine  idyls.  But  they  are  insular,  they  are  of 
springs,  streams,  and  inland  lakes.  These  begot 
those.     From  the  waters,  that  is  to  say,  came  the 


One  Type  of  Nature  TeacJimg.        193 

thoughts,  the  ideals,  the  aspirations.  The  whole 
intellectual  and  moral  fabric,  so  true  to  our 
history,  and  so  prophetic  of  its  issue,  is  insep- 
arably connected  with  the  power  of  water  over 
the    imagination. 

But,  as  you  may  consider  this  too  vague  and 
general,  I  ask  you  to  think  of  a  phenomenon  of 
our  own  century.  Just  at  its  dawn  two  young 
men,  warm  friends,  took  a  journey  together  into 
the  region  of  the  English  Lakes,  then  little  fre- 
quented, —  and  now,  by  the  bye,  about  to  be 
utilized  for  the  supply  of  water  for  the  great  city 
of  Manchester,  perhaps  seventy-five  miles  away. 
The  young  men  were  more  than  charmed,  they 
were  fascinated,  by  the  seclusion  of  those  vales, 
by  the  beauty  of  the  wild  glens,  by  the  fantastic 
shapes  of  the  mountains  (themselves  water-carved), 
by  the  humidity  of  the  region  which  the  perfect 
drainage  of  the  soil  hindered  nevertheless  from 
being  wet,  by  the  play  of  cloud,  mist,  and  sunlight, 
but  especially  by  the  lakes  themselves,  and  par- 
ticularly by  Grasmere  and  Rydal  Water.  One  of 
the  young  men,  by  far  the  greater  genius  of  the 
two,  was  enamoured  instantly,  and  kindled  the 
slower  susceptibilities  of  the  other.  The  former  of 
these  young  men  was  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 
The  latter  was  William  Wordsworth.  Within  a 
year  Wordsworth  settled  by  Grasmere,  and  in  its 

13 


194  Appendix  A. 


neighborhood  lie  spent  a  long  life.  Coleridge  set- 
tled by  Derwentvvater,  not  far  away,  but  after  some 
years  removed  to  London.  It  would  be  easily 
possible  to  show  that  the  lives  of  both  these  men 
were  definitely  affected  by  the  then  wild  lakes ; 
that  the  lakes  entered  into  their  thinking  and 
their  theories;  that,  in  the  case  of  Coleridge,  his 
power  over  English  and  American  thought  in  the 
first  half  of  this  century  —  a  power  so  great  that  it 
can  hardly  be  estimated  —  was  largely  contributed 
to  by  the  lakes ;  and  that,  as  for  Wordsworth,  who 
lived  by  Grasmere  and  Rydal  all  his  life,  and  now 
lies  in  Grasmere  churchyard,  and  who  marks  a 
new  epoch  in  English  poetry,  the  lakes  were  as  the 
water  of  life  to  him.  Of  Southey,  De  Ouincey,  and 
Scott  (whose  own  lakes  were,  however,  those  of 
the  Scottish  Highlands),  of  Wilson,  and  of  Thomas 
Arnold,  much  might  be  said  in  the  same  direction. 
There  was  never  really  any  "  Lake  School,"  except 
in  fancy,  but  there  was  a  mighty,  deathless  lake  life^ 
whose  power  in  English  literature  and  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  living  will  not  soon  die.  And  here  was 
done  for  a  few  rare  minds  by  these  inland  lakes 
and  streams,  visibly,  palpably,  and  in  a  way  vastly 
affecting  our  age,  what  less  palpably,  but  not  less 
really,  was  done  by  the  operation  of  the  same 
causes,  through  the  Arthurian  legends,  for  our 
Anglo-Saxon  people  during  many  centuries. 


One  Type  of  Nature  Teaching.       195 

The  reader  will  observe  that  the  two  illustra- 
tions are  drawn  from  within  the  ancient  northern 
glacial  belt.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to 
draw  a  third  from  within  the  same  belt  on  our  side 
of  the  Atlantic.  What  Lake  Walden  and  other 
New  England  lakes  similarly  formed,  and  their 
associated  streams,  did  for  Thoreau,  Emerson, 
and  Hawthorne,  there  is  no  estimating.  Indeed, 
perhaps  Hawthorne  is  never  so  much  at  home  in 
any  of  his  foreign  writing  as  in  his  English  Lake 
Notes.  The  waters  of  the  old  ice  lands,  having 
their  own  peculiar  setting  and  character,  need 
to  be  studied  in  relation  to  the  history  of  the 
imagination,  and  of  national  spirit,  by  some  one 
expert  both  in  glacial  action,  and  in  literature 
and  folk-lore.  Were  all  the  facts  known,  it  would 
probably  appear  that  the  lakes  and  streams  of 
this  belt,  presenting  as  they  do  a  singular  com- 
bination of  thought-impressing  elements,  have, 
from  the  times  when  man  began  to  think,  over 
and  over  again  induced  such  personal  expe- 
riences as  the  Arthurian  legends  seem  to  imply, 
as  the  Coleridge-Wordsworthian  lakes  passion  has 
put  into  biography,  and  as  Thoreau,  the  New 
England  sohtary,  lived  out.  There  seem  to 
have  been  analogous  experiences  among  our 
[American]  aborigines.  It  is  doubtful  if  Scandi- 
navian literature  can  be  explained  without  them. 


196  Appendix  A, 


The  Tell  legends  spring  ashore,  as  it  were,  from 
the  Lake  of  the  Four  Forest  Cantons.  How 
well  the  ice  wrought !  How  much  mightier  than 
Merlin's  is  the  water's  enchantment  in  the  old  ice 
lands ! 


APPENDIX   B. 
OMITTED   PART   OF   DISCOURSE  VI. 


NOTE. 

"Ye  cannot  bear  them  now,"  said  Christ  of  "many  things" 
he  wished  to  utter,  and  refrained  himself.  He  is  doing  so  still. 
And,  friend,  he  is  doing  so  by  you  and  me.  This  should  humble 
us.  It  should  also  give  us  quick  insight  and  tact  what  to  say  to 
others.  For  one  man's  noonday  is  another's  midnight ;  one  man's 
holiest  truth  of  God,  another's  heresy  or  blasphemy.  "  He  hath 
spoken  blasphemy,"  they  said  of  him,  the  blameless,  to  whom  be- 
longed perfect  vision.  Here  is  one  range  in  which  ministers  need 
Chris tliness.  What  to  say,  what  not  to  say,  and  how  to  express 
the  message  given  them,  only  Christ  can  teach. 

When  we  had  come  to  the  last  discourse  of  this  series,  I  could 
not  go  right  on,  but  must  pause.  The  substance  of  what  I  said 
in  the  pause,  follows.  It  is  not  included  in  the  discourse  as 
printed,  because  matter  more  pertinent  to  the  close  of  the  dis- 
cussion had  a  right  to  be  substituted  for  it  there.  (See  note, 
p.  i6i.)  It  appears  here  for  the  same  reason  thatVaused  it  to  be 
spoken,  namely,  to  help  any  persons  who,  having  come  thus  far, 
may  need  its  help.     God  bless  them,  every  one  ! 


OMITTED   PART   OF  DISCOURSE   VI.^ 

THERE  is  in  this  age,  as  in  every  thinking  age, 
a  movement,  or  progress,  of  religious  thought. 
This  is  not  a  movement  of  any  man,  or  of  any 
institution,  or  of  any  sect  or  denomination,  or  of 
any  great  division  of  the  Church,  such  as  Pres- 
byterian or  Anghcan  or  Lutheran,  or  such  as 
Protestant  or  CathoHc  or  Greek,  or,  indeed,  of  any 
yet  wider  division  among  men,  Hke  that  between 

1  Synopsis.  — There  is  in  this  age  a  movement,  or  progress, 
of  religious  thought.  — This  not  of  a  man,  or  institution,  or  sec- 
tion of  the  Church,  or  of  the  Church  itself,  exclusively,  but  of  the 
world.  — Multiform,  doubtless  in  error  in  part,  but  God-inspired 
and  Godward-moving.  —  Illustrated  by  the  analogy  of  the  literary 
movement  of  the  past  century  within  the  languages  of  Europe.  — 
Able  to  be  perceived  by  us  contemporaneously.  —  Profitable  for 
preaching.  —  Our  Saviour's  desire  that  men  should  note  the  signs 
of  the  times.— His  Spirit  to  guide  into  all  the  truth.  — This, 
properly,  the  temper  of  Protestantism,  and  particularly  of  Con- 
gregationalism.—The  preacher  had  been  understood  hardly 
rightly  by  some,  conscientiously,  however.  — Why  he  had  spoken, 
with  what  shrinking,  and  in  what  attitude  toward  the  subject.— 
A  personal  Credo.  —  Short  summary  of  these  discourses.  — Christ 
the  centre  of  the  present  movement,  or  progress,  — (i)  For,  etc. 
[as  on  page  i6o]. 


200  Appendix  B, 


Christians  and  those  who  are  Theists  merely,  or 
Hke  that  between  the  men  of  faith  and  the  men  of 
unfaith.  It  is  a  movement,  rather,  of  our  whole 
race,  in  the  realm  of  the  religious  faculty.  It 
affects  different  individuals,  different  classes  of 
men,  different  divisions  of  the  religious  world, 
variously,  according  to  their  characteristics  and 
points  of  view,  but  it  is  one  movement,  in  different 
parts  and  in  different  manifestations. 

I  hope  I  make  my  meaning  clear.  I  am  not 
speaking  now  of  particular  religious  beliefs.  I  am 
speaking  of  the  religious  heart  of  men.  This  heart 
is  moving.  God  is  touching  it.  Sometimes  it  is 
moving  under  forms  of  error,  feeling  after  God. 
Sometimes  it  is  moving  under  simple,  clear 
thoughts  of  God,  in  holy  men  as  it  were  seeing 
him.  But  it  is  one  movement.  And  that  Infinite 
Being  who  lives  and  moves  in  all  things,  lives  and 
moves  in  it. 

Perhaps  I  can  illustrate  what  I  mean  from  an 
altogether  different  subject,  namely,  literature. 
We  have  long  known  that  there  was  a  distinct 
movement  in  English  literature,  beginning  late  in 
the  last  century,  blossoming  forth  early  in  this,  and 
unfolding  with  the  century.  Now  those  who  have 
given  themselves  to  the  comparative  study  of  the 
literature  of  the  same  period  in  other  languages  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe,  have  discovered,  and  are 


Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  VI,      201 

gradually  tracing  out,  a  corresponding  movement 
in  the  literature  of  those  languages.  The  lan- 
guages were  different;  the  races  were  different; 
the  points  of  view  were  different.  But  the  move- 
ment was  one,  and  marked  by  almost  identically 
the  same  impulses.  This  has  been  specially  im- 
pressed upon  me  by  a  conversation  lately  had  on 
the  subject  with  a  gentleman  ot  high  attainments 
who  is  making  this  comparative  study  his  specialty, 
and  who,  I  hope,  will  by  and  by  write  on  it. 

Consider,  I  pray  you,  what  an  impressive  thing 
this  is,  —  to  know  that,  while  our  English  literature 
was  taking  a  new  form  and  bent,  almost  unwit- 
tingly the  literature  of  the  Continental  languages 
was  taking,  intrinsically,  a  corresponding  form  and 
bent.  What  does  such  a  fact  say  to  us?  Does  it 
not  say  that  the  men  speaking  the  different  lan- 
guages of  Europe,  having  been  for  ages  under 
the  same  general  tutelage  of  civic  struggle  and  of 
Christian  influence,  were  responding  under  one 
and  the  same  guidance  of  God,  to  the  touch  of  his 
breath  and  mind,  and  through  representative 
writers,  each  unknown  to  the  others  at  the  start, 
were  breaking  forth  into  new  and  higher  literary 
expression  ?  I  cannot  look  at  it  in  any  other  way. 
And  this  circumstance  I  regard  as  yet  another  evi- 
dence that  the  God  and  Father  of  us  all  has  not 
left  the  world  alone,  either  in  religious  or  in  secular 


202  Appendix  B. 


matters,  but  is  moving  in  it,  and  bending  it  to  his 
thoughts. 

Now,  similarly,  in  the  matter  of  the  religious 
impulse  and  thought  in  men,  there  is  a  movement, 
pervasive,  world-wide,  diverse  in  form,  diverse 
in  expression,  often  faulty,  perchance  repeatedly 
in  error,  but,  in  one  way  or  another,  feeling  its 
way  or  thinking  its  way  nearer  to  God.  In  ages 
past,  so  isolated  were  men,  and  so  inadequate  was 
their  interchange  of  thought,  that  such  a  move- 
ment could  not  be  discerned  as  of  wide  extent  in 
its  time,  but  was  so  revealed  later  to  the  student 
of  the  history  of  the  respective  times.  But  to-day, 
so  near  is  the  world,  in  its  parts,  brought  to  itself 
as  a  whole,  by  steam,  electricity,  and  the  printing- 
press,  that  we  can  see  on  its  many  sides  this 
movement  going  on,  and,  contemporaneously,  can 
watch  it. 

It  has  accordingly  seemed  to  me  that  this  im- 
pressive thing,  the  movement  of  religious  thought 
at  the  present  day,  discernible  by  us  contempora- 
neously, and  of  as  much  vaster  moment  than  any 
movement  of  literature  as  religion  itself  is  of 
vaster  moment  than  literature,  would  be  a  profita- 
ble subject  for  our  meditation  these  closing  Sunday 
nights  of  the  year,  so  far  as  absence  of  other  Sun- 
day-night appointments  left  us  the  evenings  free 
for  such   meditation.      We    were  to   climb,   so   to 


Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  VI,       203 

speak,  into  a  lofty  lookout,  and  gaze  over  wide 
extending  land  and  sea,  to  observe  how  the 
thoughts  of  men  were  moving,  and  how  freshly 
they  were  thinking  of  God. 

Our  Saviour  criticised  the  children  of  light  for 
not  being  wise  enough  in  their  generation.  He 
indicated  that  it  might  be  a  mark  of  hypocrisy  to 
have  insight  about  such  signs  in  the  outer  world 
as  those  of  the  weather,  but  not  to  be  able  to  dis- 
cern the  signs  of  the  times.  By  this,  I  suppose  he 
meant  that  the  persons  addressed,  being  discerning 
enough  to  detect  the  indications  of  the  face  of 
nature,  but  wilfully  shutting  their  eyes  against  the 
new  spiritual  light  which  was  breaking  upon  the 
world  in  their  time,  were  not  candid ;  and  that, 
therefore,  since  they  professed  to  be  holy  men, 
they  were,  in  so  far,  untrue  to  their  profession, 
or,  in  other  words,  hypocritical.  And  if  ever  I, 
for  one,  find  myself  unwilling  with  open  eyes  to 
behold  the  light  on  religious  matters  which  God 
is  bringing  to  our  time,  I  shall  fear  that  it  is 
from  some  timidity  or  prejudice  or  self-interest 
in  me ;  and  that  thus,  professing  to  be  a  child  of 
God,  I  am  to  this  degree  hypocritical  in  it,  that  I 
will  not  let  God  teach  me,  his  child,  the  lessons 
he  is  trying  to  teach  me. 

Our  Saviour   also    affirmed   that   he  had  many 
things  to  say  which  men  could  not  then  bear,  and 


204  Appendix  B. 


promised  the  Spirit  of  Truth  to  guide  men  into 
all  the  truth.  The  same  has  been  the  characteris- 
tic attitude  of  Protestantism,  —  not  to  fear  the  truth, 
but  to  seek  it  and  be  ready  for  it.  The  same, 
particularly,  has  been  the  temper  of  our  Congrega- 
tionalism, Robinson  urging  the  departing  Pilgrims 
to  expect  fresh  light  to  break  from  the  Bible,  and 
—  as  an  early  New  England  writer  reports  —  de- 
ploring the  tendency  of  the  Reformation  to  stick 
where  Luther  or  Calvin  or  Knox  stopped,  instead 
of,  in  their  spirit,  going  on  into  the  whole  truth 
as  God  should  continue  to  make  it  clear. 

I  would  not  say  an  unkind  word  of  any  one, 
nor  judge  any  one.  I  would  only  criticise  myself, 
and  judge  myself,  and  I  do  that  severely.  But  I 
am  at  a  loss  to  see  how  I  could  have  been  under- 
stood in  some  instances  quite  as  I  have,  in  the 
matter  of  these  discourses,  —  I  doubt  not  conscien- 
tiously, and  from  true  motives,  so  that  I  entertain 
for  any  so  understanding  me  not  only  respect,  but 
a  tender  and  sincere  love.  Such  are,  indeed, 
among  the  truest  people  that  I  know. 

In  this  spirit  of  respect  and  love  let  us  look  at 
the  matter  for  a  moment.  And,  first,  speaking 
generally,  think  you,  dear  friends,  it  is  a  right 
thing,  or  not  a  right  thing,  for  a  Christian  preacher 
to  attempt  to  describe  a  general  age  movement 
of  religious  thought  in  this  the  most  wonderful 
period  since  Christ  left  the  world? 


Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  V/.       205 

And,  next,  speaking  personally,  do  you  think 
that  I,  who  love  you,  could  lightly  give  you  one 
troubled  or  anxious  moment?  I  trust  what  you 
know  of  me  will  lead  you  to  believe  otherwise. 
The  fact  is,  —  I  may  as  well  confess  it,  —  that  when 
the  question  arose  in  my  own  soul  whether  I  should 
attempt  to  do  this  or  not,  —  and  I  consulted  on  the 
subject  with  no  human  being,  —  I  shrank  from  it 
almost  with  trembling.  Having  put  the  title  of 
the  sermons  in  the  printer's  hands  for  announce- 
ment, I  came  pretty  near  resolving  to  draw  my 
pen  through  the  proof,  and  to  have  the  type  dis- 
tributed before  it  went  to  press.  And  I  only  re- 
frained from  doing  so  under  a  solemn  conviction 
of  the  duty  of  speaking  to  my  people,  and  to 
any  who  cared  to  come  and  hear,  of  this  move- 
ment of  religious  thought  in  our  time,  —  not  as 
indorsing  it  in  all  respects,  for  in  some  respects  I 
could  not  indorse  it,  but  as  describing  and  char- 
acterizing it  for  our  information  and  help;  and 
under  a  solemn  conviction,  likewise,  that  not  to 
speak  would  be  to  fail  to  act  the  part  of  the  house- 
holder spoken  of  by  our  Lord,  who  "  bringeth 
forth  out  of  his  treasure  things  new  and  old." 

And  this  was  all  that  I  was  doing.  I  was  not 
expressing,  except  where  I  indicated  it,  my  own 
opinions,  or  those  of  any  other  man,  or  of  any  set 
of  men,  or  of  any  institution,  or  of  any  wing  of 


!o6  Appendix  B. 


thought;  but  I  was  characterizing  a  movement,  a 
trend  and  march  of  current  history,  of  which,  in 
one  form  or  another,  whether  we  will  or  not,  we 
are  all  a  part.  And  I  expressly  stated  that  this 
movement  might  err.  We  are  liable  to  err  in 
everything,  particularly  in  everything  new  or  un- 
tried ;  and  I  said  that  it  was  one  of  the  perils  of 
our  time  that  its  newer  religious  thought  might 
stray  in  this  or  that  particular.^ 

But  what,  then,  are  we  to  do  ?  Are  we  to  shut 
our  eyes?  Are  we  to  stop  thinking?  When  the 
age  is  thinking,  are  we  to  refuse  to  consider  its 
thoughts,  and  learn  from  them?  I  cannot  do  so. 
Nor  can  I,  as  a  Christian  preacher,  think  it  right 
to  do  so  by  my  people.  Especially  I  cannot  when 
I  see  our  Lord,  who,  had  he  remained  quiet  on 
certain  subjects,  might  have  received  a  wide  pop- 
ular following,  refusing  to  do  so,  but  truly  speak- 
ing his  thought,  though  death  in  consequence  was 
certain;  and  when  I  see  Saint  Paul,  all  through 
the  Acts,  while  conciliatory  and  charitable,  bear- 
ing witness  to  unpopular  truth,  and  suffering  for  it. 
I  must  follow  in  our  Lord's  steps  and  in  Saint 
Paul's  in  like  exigencies,  should  they  arise. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  right,  in  this  discourse,  — 
which,  in  closing  the  series,  is  partly  of  the  nature 
of  recapitulation,  —  that  I  should  allude,  lovingly, 
1  See,  for  example,  p.  109. 


Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  VI.      207 

to  this  matter.  I  again  testify  to  the  conscientious- 
ness and  true  motive,  as  I  trust,  of  any  dissent,  and 
to  my  love  for  those  who  may  be  in  such  a  case.  I 
can  well  understand  that  approach  to  truth  which 
is  theirs,  and  which  seems  to  compel  dissent.  And 
I  ask  you  who,  in  such  numbers,  have  followed 
the  discourses  with  eager  interest,  to  have  for  any 
such  the  same  respect,  love,  and  sense  of  point  of 
view.  For  if  any  of  us  have  larger  light,  the 
proof  of  the  true  heart  in  that  light  will  be  love, 
and  love's  power  to  appreciate  and  understand 
those  who  have  not  the  same  light. 

I  ought  to  add  that,  while  I  have  not  been  ex- 
pounding my  opinions,  but  describing  a  move- 
ment, it  is  true,  nevertheless,  that  my  heart  joys 
and  sings  with  the  movement.  Not  able  to  agree 
with  it  in  every  particular,  I  believe  its  trend  to  be 
in  the  right  direction,  and  it  stirs  and  thrills  my 
whole  being.  But,  lest  any  misunderstand,  I  giv^e, 
what  will  perhaps  be  reassuring,  this  my  personal 
Credo:  — 

/  believe  in  the  living  God,  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Spirit,  07ie  and  yet  three:  the  Son  and  the 
Spirit  with  the  Father  very  God:  the  Son  eternally 
begotten:  no  man  saved  except  througJi  the  Son:  no 
man  saved  except  born  into  a  new  life  tJirongh  the 
Spirit:  the  Bible,  rigJitly  interpreted,  the  one  tran- 
scendent literature,  pointing  tis  to  God,  authoritative 


2o8  Appendix  B. 


over  life:  sin  awful,  its  conseqitences  terrible,  its 
punishnieni  inevitahle,  perhaps  without  end:  man 
deathless,  to  be  clothed  upon  with  a  spiritual  body, 
hardly  so  ninch  to  be  judged  as  forever  being  judged 
by  holy,  and  yet  pitying  and  helping,  God,  and  for- 
ever going,  under  sneJi  a  God,  to  his  own  place: 
and  eye  not  having  seen  nor  ear  heard  nor  heart  of 
man  conceived  the  things  prepared,  of  good  for  the 
true  and  of  evil  for  the  false,  in  the  larger  life. 
Amen. 

I  should  need  to  say  much  more,  fully  to  round 
out  what  I  have  put  into  so  few  words ;  and  my 
use  of  these  words  might,  in  turn,  easily  be  misun- 
derstood :  but  so  I  believe,  sincerely,  and  not  hand- 
ling the  words  in  any  other  than  their  obvious  sense. 
And,  so  believing,  I  do  not  belong  under  certain 
denominational  names  which  have  been  at  one 
time  or  another  spoken  of  as  if  they  might  be 
mine.  I  must,  however,  confess  this,  that  I  respect 
those  denominations,  love  every  true  soul  in  them, 
wish  I  might  go  out  in  outward  as  well  as  in  spir- 
itual fellowship  to  them,  and  believe  that  they, 
though  I  must  dissent  from  them  in  certain  par- 
ticulars, are,  nevertheless,  true  parts  of  Christ's 
Church,  are  bearing  witness  to  aspects  of  truth 
which  we  are  prone  to  overlook,  and  are  only  disfel- 
lowshipped  by  us  through  what,  in  the  broad  light 
of  eternity,  will  be  looked  back  to  as  a  denying 


Omitted  Part  of  Discourse  VI.       209 

of  the  very  spirit  of  our  Lord,  —  done,  however, 
through  our  having  honestly  mistaken  what  that 
spirit  was. 

I  now  turn  to  our  subject  proper,  namely,  Christ 
the  centre  of  the  newer  religious  thinking.  But 
even  here,  I  must  delay  for  a  brief  recapitulation. 

In  the  first,  then,  of  these  discourses  I  showed 
that,  as  there  has  been  in  the  past,  so  there  is  now, 
a  movement  of  religious  thought,  —  not  your 
movement,  or  mine,  or  that  of  any  set  of  men,  or 
division  or  denomination  of  Christendom,  but  a 
movement,  —  and  I  indicated  some  of  its  charac- 
teristics. 

In  the  second  and  third  of  these  discourses  I 
asked  you  to  think  of  the  mighty  spring,  or 
motive,  underlying  this  movement.  I  pointed  out 
how,  both  in  its  nature,  and  as  regards  the  men  in 
it,  it  is  impelled  by  hunger  after  God  and  passion 
for  men ;  and,  also,  how  this  hunger  and  passion 
are  leading  to  the  re-study  —  not  necessarily  the 
rejection,  but  the  re-study — and  more  adequate 
interpretation  of  some  Christian  doctrines  and 
practices,  with  the  consequent  overthrow  of  certain 
idols  of  the  mind  in  these  directions. 

In  the  fourth  and  fifth  discourses  I  asked  you  to 
think  of  the  material,  or  data,  out  of  which,  induc- 
tively, this  movement  is  going  forward  into  larger 
and,  as   I  believe    it  will   ultimately  prove,  juster 

14 


2 1  o  Appendix  B. 


and  more  adequate  conceptions  of  religious  truth. 
I  pointed  out  how  it  studies  two  books :  the  un- 
written book,  consisting  of  nature,  history,  and  life, 
or,  in  one  word,  the  world ;  and  the  written  book, 
the  Bible.  I  pointed  out  how  it  seeks  to  let  each 
book  throw  light  on  the  other,  and  help  interpret 
the  other ;  but  that  it  has  an  undiminished  rever- 
ence for,  and  submission  to  the  Bible,  rightly 
understood  and  interpreted. 

It  is  to  this  point,  then,  that  we  now  come  in 
closing;  namely,  to  note  that,  etc.  [as  on  page 
171]. 


APPENDIX   C. 

SOME   PLAIN   QUESTIONING. 


N  O  T  E. 

There  are  aspects  of  discussion  which  are  incapable  of  system- 
atic treatment.  They  are  matters  of  point  of  view,  of  antago- 
nistic or  sympathetic  approach,  of  objections  or  confirmatory 
considerations  suggested  by  the  mind,  etc.  They  require  per- 
sonal conference,  question  and  answer,  and  downright,  thorough 
talk.  Three  supposed  persons  are  accordingly  suffered  to  do 
some  of  this  hereinafter.  One  should  not  forget  the  dear  resur- 
rection dialogue.  The  voice  even  of  angels  sutfices  not.  The 
questioning  mind  insists  on  feeling  its  own  way  toward  the  light. 
And  so  it  is  written  :  — 

I. 

They  [two  angels]  say  unto  her.  Woman,  why  weepest  thou  ? 
She  saith  unto  them,  Because  they  have  taken  away  my  Lord, 
and  I  know  not  where  they  have  laid  him. 

II. 

She  turned  herself  back,  and  beholdeth  Jesus  standing,  and 
knew  not  that  it  was  Jesus. 

Jesus  saith  unto  her,  Woman,  why  weepest  thou  ?  whom 
seekest  thou  ? 

She,  supposing  him  to  be  the  gardener,  saith  unto  him.  Sir,  if 
thou  hast  borne  him  hence,  tell  me  where  thou  hast  laid  him,  and 
I  will  take  him  away. 

Jesus  saith  unto  her,  Mary  ! 

She  turneth  herself,  and  saith  unto  him,  Master  ! 


SOME   PLAIN   QUESTIONING. 

I. 

UNDER  this  ''  newer  religious  thinking," 
which,  you  say,  is  not  yours,  —  though  I 
should  consider  it  a  tolerably  faithful  reflection  of 
your  ideas,  —  but  which  is,  the  rather,  of  the  time, 
and,  indeed,  of  all  of  us,  —  a  statement  from  which 
I  beg  to  dissent,  —  what  becomes  of  the  religion  of 
the  lowly  Jesus? 

B.  It  seems  to  me,  friend,  that  the  religion  of 
Jesus  is  for  the  first  time  beginning  to  get  ade- 
quate expression  in  this  thinking. 

A.  What!  in  such  a  worldly  time  as  this?  This 
is  not  such  a  time  as  Edward  Payson's,  or  as  Jona- 
than Edwards's,  or  as  that  of  the  Reformers,  to  go 
no  farther  back. 

B.  I  should  hope  it  might  in  some  ways  im- 
prove upon  those  times. 

A.  But  I  mean  in  spirit.  We  do  not  pray  as 
much,  nor  fast  as  much,  nor  do  we  eschew  the 
world  as  they  did. 

B.  Nor,  let  me  add,  as  John  the  Baptist  did. 
*'  He  that  is  but  little  in  the  Kingdom  of  heaven 


2  14  Appendix  C. 


is    greater   than    he."     *'  The    Son    of  man    came 
eating  and  drinking." 

A.  But  tell  me,  if  you  please,  how  the  religion 
of  the  lowly  Jesus  is,  as  you  have  just  said,  ''  for 
the  first  time  beginning  to  get  adequate  expression 
in  this  thinking." 

B.  In  the  matter  of  God. 

A.  How? 

B.  Jesus  was  in  a  living  touch  with  his  Father. 
He  did  not  get  it  roundabout  through  Moses  or 
Isaiah,  but  in  direct  consciousness.  So  getting  it, 
he  swept  aside  various  traditional  thoughts  of  God, 
to  the  scandal  of  many.  The  newer  thinking  is  in 
an  analogous  temper.  It,  as  it  were,  sees  God,  and 
hates  the  idols  which  have  usurped  his  place. 

A.  I  call  that  very  irreverent,  to  say  the  least. 
**  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time."  Besides, 
how  can  this  human  thinking,  or  any  other,  be 
likened  to  the  thinking  of  the  omniscient  Jesus? 

B,  *'  The  pure  in  heart  .  .  .  shall  see  God." 

A.  In  heaven,  it  means. 

B.  Yes,  and  also,  in  beginnings  at  least,  on  earth. 
We  are  bidden,  moreover,  to  have  the  mind  in  us 
"  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus,"  and  does  not 
that  mean  that  human  thinking  may  —  nay,  should 
—  be  like  that  of  Jesus?  He,  by  the  way,  has 
told  us  that,  at  least  in  one  particular,  he  is  not 
omniscient. 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  2 1 5 

A.  Well,  go  on. 

B.  In  this  thinking,  also,  the  passion  of  Jesus 
for  men  is  waking  up. 

A.  I  don't  call  these  university  extensions,  these 
boys'  clubs,  etc.,  the  passion  of  Jesus  for  men. 
He  was  seeking  to  save  their  immortal  souls. 

B.  Did  he  ever  use  the  expression  "  immortal 
soul"?  In  his  personal  handling  of  men  did  he 
ordinarily  thrust  forward  that  idea?  Was  he  not 
feeding  them,  telling  them  where  to  cast  the  net, 
and  becoming  the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners? 

A.  Go  on. 

B.  In  this  thinking,  too,  to  a  degree  never 
equalled  before,  we  are  getting  the  approach  of 
Jesus  to  nature.  He  was  in  the  most  perfect  in- 
timacy and  harmony  with  it,  no  naturalist  or  poet 
so   much   so.^     In  this   spirit  the   newer  thinking 

1  With  the  Saviour,  let  us  not  forget,  it  was  all  vision.  He 
had  the  second  sight.  The  hen  brooding  her  chickens;  the 
sparrow  fallen  by  the  hedgerow ;  the  woman  making  bread ;  the 
mason  slowly  raising  the  four  walls  of  a  house  on  rock  or  on 
sand ;  the  lily  tossing  on  its  stem ;  the  azure  or*  murky  sky ;  the 
sower  going  forth  to  sow ;  the  fishers  drawing  their  nets ;  the  mer- 
chantmen passing  up  and  down  along  the  Galilean  caravan  route ; 
the  self-mastered  centurions,  under  authority,  and  therefore  keep- 
ing a  peace  and  winning  a  love  among  a  turbulent  population, 
which  proconsul,  king,  and  emperor  alike  were  unable  to  win ;  the 
new  Roman  coinage  finding  its  beneficent  Avay  into  Palestine ; 
priest,  Levite,  and  wretched  Samaritan ;  phylacteried  and  admired 
Pharisee,  and  native-born  farmer  of  taxes  for  the  foreigner,  uni- 
versally hated;  the   wind   blowing  where  it  listed;   the  fig  tree 


2 1 6  Appendix  C. 


approaches  nature,   history,   and  hfe,  —  that  Is  to 
say,  the  world,  or  nature  in  its  larger  sense. 

A.  "The  approach  of  Jesus  to  nature"?  He 
lived  above  nature,  and  only  used  an  occasional 
illustration  from  it,  and  — 

B.  More  than  "  occasional,"  friend. 

A.  That  does  not  make  any  difference.  His 
only  use  for  nature  was  to  illustrate  spiritual  truth 
by  it. 

B.  Did  he  not  say  that  his  Father,  with  whom 
he  was  one,  fed  the  birds,  and  so  clothed  the  grass 
of  the  field?  Was  not  a  divine  intimacy  with 
nature  implied? 

A.  We  can't  stop  to  dispute  every  point.  I 
was  about  to  say  that  he  only  used  an  occasional 
illustration  from  nature,  and  that  his  strong  hold 
was  with   Scripture. 

B.  And  there,  again,  we  have,  in  the  newer 
thinking,  an  approach  to  the  spirit  and  meaning 
of  Scripture  such  as  has  not  been  had  since  Christ. 
It  is  for  the  real  life  of  the  Bible,  for  its  very  heart, 
that  the  newer  thinking  seeks.     The   Saviour  was 


putting  forth  her  leaves;  the  eagles  gathering  themselves  to- 
gether, both  zoological  and  Roman ;  Herod's  marble  wonder,  not 
yet  builded  after  forty  and  six  years,  —  all,  everything,  spoke  to 
him,  and  through  him  to  men.  "  Never  man  so  spake,"  they 
freely  said.  'T  was  because  he  saw  so  much.  Out  of  the  abun- 
dance of  the  heart  the  mouth  spake.  —  "  Primary  QuaUficatiotts 
for  the  Ministry,''  in  "  Andover  Review,''  May-June,  1893. 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  2 1 7 

doing  that.  Because  he  was  doing  it,  his  coun- 
trymen thought  him  destroying  law  and  prophets ; 
just  as  many  good  people  think  now  regarding 
some  of  the  most  thorough  and  devout  Bible 
students.  And  as  it  is  the  real  life  of  the  Bible, 
its  very  heart,  that  the  newer  thinking  seeks, 
so,  as  never  before  since  Christ,  it  is  finding  it. 
Compare,  for  example,  George  Adam  Smith's 
Isaiah  with  even  so  modern  and  strong  a  work  as 
Alexander's  on  that  book. 

A.  ''George  Adam  Smith's  Isaiah".?  It  is  all 
politics  ! 

B.  Which  are  God  in  the  world.  You  thought 
so  when  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  went  into 
effect. 

A.  But  politics  when  Lincoln  freed  the  slave 
and  politics  now  are  two  very  different  things. 

B.  God  not  in  them  now? 

A.  I  should  sooner  call  it  the  Devil  in  them. 
But  I  will  ask  you  one  question.  What  you  have 
said  maybe  all  very  well  in  theory,  —  though,  to 
be  frank,  I  don't  believe  one  syllable  of  your 
theory;  it  seems  to  me  a  mere  playing  with 
words,  —  but  what  becomes  of  the  Bible  on  such 
a  view  of  it? 

B.  Precisely  what  became  of  it  before.  It 
speaks  to  life  just  as  then;  only  its  meaning  is 
greatly  deepened,  because  its  spirit  more  than  its 
letter  speaks  now. 


2i8  Appendix  C, 


A.  But  who  is  to  determine  what  its  spirit  is? 
Before  these  new  theories  came  along,  we  had  a 
plain  ''  Thus  saith  the  Lord  "  about  everything. 

B.  Yes,  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  Send  back  the 
fugitive  slaves  as  Saint  Paul  sent  back  Onesimus." 

A.  I  deny  that.  The  pro-slavery  men  never 
took  the  spirit  of  the  Bible.  That  little  epistle  to 
Philemon,  only  twenty-five  verses  of  it  in  all,  a 
mere  note  going  back  with  the  man's  slave,  they 
made  more  of  than  of  all  the  rest  of  the  Bible  put 
together.  For  my  part,  when  I  used  to  hear  the 
sermons  from  it,  I  often  wished  that  Paul  had  never 
written  it,  or  Onesimus  had  lost  it,  or  Philemon's 
baby  had  thrown  it  into  the  fire. 

B.  That  is  the  very  point.  There  are  other 
passages,  here  and  there  in  the  Bible,  which  many 
a  devout  soul  has  wished  had  never  been  written, 
or  had  been  lost,  because  they  have  been  so 
misused. 

A.  Hold  !     I  was  only  talking  about  Philemon. 

B.  But  I  was  talking  about  some  other  passages. 

A,  Then  I  count  what  you  say  heterodox. 

B.  It  is  not  the  first  time  I  have  heard  that. 
Let  us  go  back.  The  anti-slavery  people  insisted 
on  the  spirit  of  the  Bible,  and  their  opponents  on 
its  letter ;  and  the  latter  asked,  in  effect,  precisely 
the  question  which  you  were  asking  a  moment 
ago,    '*Who  is  to  determine   what  its  spirit  is?" 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  2 1 9 

Ah !  my  friend,  only  the  Hving  Spirit  of  God,  in 
the  living  spirits  of  men,  can  determine  what  the 
spirit  of  the  Bible  is. 

A.  You  mean  that  nothing  is  stable? 

B.  Matters  are  stable  in  one  sense.  They  are 
working  ever  toward  the  truth.  But  nothing  is 
stable  in  another  sense,  if  it  be  alive.  Growth,  con- 
tinual advance,  as  you  grew  from  a  boy  to  a  man, 
and  as  slave  days  advanced  into  days  of  freedom, 
—  this  is  the  order  of  life. 

A.  But  we  have  those  things  now. 

B.  And  would  you  leave  no  future  for  you,  and 
me,  and  our  race? 

A.  A  future  in  heaven. 

B.  But  what  shall  we  do  there,  with  growth  at 
an  end? 

A.  We  shall  not  get  there,  if  nothing  is  stable 
here.  I  want  everything  exact,  fixed,  and  man- 
datory. 

B.  The  craving  for  that  —  the  craving,  that  is 
to  say,  for  outward  authority  —  has  taken  many  a 
good  man  to  Rome. 

A.  I  am  not  that  kind  of  a  person.  I  take  my 
stand  with  the  Reformers,  and  demand  a  "  Thus 
saith  the  Lord  "  for  everything. 

B.  Not  apprehending  what  the  spirit  of  the 
Reformers  was,  my  friend.  But  let  us  see.  Was 
not  that  what  your  son  desired  last  night?     Per- 


2  20  Appendix  C. 


plexed  on  a  certain  question,  did  he  not  ask  you 
to  tell  him  just  what  to  do?  But  you  did  not  tell 
him.  You  were  too  sensible  to  do  so.  You  said, 
"  My  son,  you  have  arrived  at  years  of  discretion, 
and  while  I  will  give  you  any  light  on  this  matter 
which  I  can,  you  must  be  a  man  now,  and  decide 
your  own  questions."  You  did  not  give  him,  in 
other  words,  for  reasons  which  seemed  to  you 
wise,  what  he  wanted,  namely,  a  *'  Thus  saith  my 
father." 

A.  But  that  was  only  on  a  business  matter.  To 
learn  business,  a  man  must  use  his  own  head,  not 
some  other  person's.  But,  for  the  infinite  concerns 
of  the  immortal  soul,  a  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord  "  is 
needed;  not  a  "Thus  saith  President  Harper,  or 
Professor  Briggs,  or  these  new  departure  preach- 
ers that  are  getting  into  the  pulpits  nowadays." 

B.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that,  in  order  to  train 
your  son  for  business  life,  finer  methods  are  needed 
than  to  train  him  and  you  and  me  for  our  being 
about  our  Father's  business  forever? 

A.  That  is  how  you  play  with  words.  There 
is  no  logic  in  theology  nowadays,  no  major  prem- 
ise, minor  premise,  nor  conclusion.  I  have  been 
wasting  your  time  and  mine,  too,  in  so  long  a 
talk.  Here  comes  Mr.  C.  He  is  one  of  your 
kind.  I  don't  mean  you  any  harm,  remember. 
Good-day. 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  221 

B.  I  had  rather  you  would  harm  me  than  harm 
my  influence.  But  God  will  take  care  of  that. 
Good-day,  and  may  he  be  with  and  bless  you ! 


II. 

C.    Good-morning. 

B.  Good-morning. 

C.  I  am  so  glad  I  have  found  you.  I  take  the 
train  to-night  for  my  little  mission  among  the 
mountains.  We  shall  not  have  a  chance  to  do 
church  work  together  again,  perhaps  ever,  nor 
shall  we  meet  for  a  long  time.  I  want  to  ask  you 
some  questions.     Put  the  answers  in  pat. 

B.  I  have  not  much  wisdom.  Let  us  have  the 
questions.     I  will  do  the  best  I  can  with  them. 

C.  Is  there,  to  begin  with,  any  truth  in  the 
sneering  remark  that  the  newer  religious  thinking 
''is  a  theology  without  a  theologian"? 

B.  We  have  the  same  state  of  things  in  that 
matter  which  always  ensues  when  general  work, 
which  has  probably  inclined  to  a  priori,  yields 
place  to  induction,  with  detailed  work.  The  latter 
sets  everybody  a  task.  There  are  fifty  or  five 
hundred  scientists,  or  theologians,  where  there  used 
to  be  five.  They  subdivide  the  subject.  Each  toils 
in  his  own  field.  There  is,  thus,  not  the  chance 
for  individual  prominence  which  there  once  was. 


2  22  Appendix  C, 


The  popular  imagination,  therefore,  is  not  so  much 
appealed  to,  and  the  remark  you  quote  is  readily 
caught  up.  "  Make  us  a  king  to  judge  us,"  the 
popular  imagination  is  always  demanding,  no  longer 
of  Samuel,  but  of  theology.  But  the  remark  is 
very  superficial.  It  would  imply,  in  principle, 
that  natural  history  in  America  is  going  backward 
because  no  man  among  us  has  succeeded  to  the 
precise  eminence  of  Agassiz.  Agassiz,  on  the  con- 
trary, strove  to  pass  the  blessing  on  to  thousands. 
This  was  the  meaning  of  his  summer  schools.  It 
is  inconceivable  that  he  could  make  such  a  re- 
mark of  the  newer  science,  were  he  still  with  us, 
as  this  about  the  newer  religious  thinking. 

C.  What  you  say  leads  to  my  second  question : 
Is  our  instruction  in  theology  up  to  the  necessi- 
ties of  the  hour? 

B.  On  the  whole  it  is  doing  well,  —  in  some 
of  our  institutions  very  well.  There  does  not 
always  go  with  the  necessary  subdivision  of  work 
so  much  of  a  unifying  spirit  as  there  should. 
There  is  lack,  sometimes,  of  a  temper,  in  this 
respect,  like  Agassiz's  in  natural  history,  or  Mark 
Hopkins's  in  ethics.  Neither  has  theology  proper, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  enough  broken  with  the  old 
topical  divisions,  subdivisions,  etc.  The  Linnsean 
classification  in  Botany  had  its  uses,  but  was 
obliged  to    yield  to  a  better.     Courage   and   con- 


Some  Plain  Questioning'  223 

structive  genius  are  needed  in  this  respect.  All 
things  considered,  however,  —  for  we  must  not 
forget  that  we  are  in  a  change  of  outlook  almost 
revolutionary,  and  that  the  conditions  of  work  are 
therefore  difficult,  —  the  situation  is  gratifying, 
though  there  are  some  things  yet  to  be  desired. 

C.  I  am  glad  to  hear  you  say  so.  Is  there  not, 
however,  danger  that  the  newer  approach  to  truth 
will  constitute  yet  another  dogmatism? 

B.  Certainly.  In  individuals  it  surely  will. 
Few  men  have  the  calibre  and  heart  to  remain 
always  teachable  and  learning.  Against  this  peril 
in  ourselves  let  us  both  strive.  But  I  think,  under 
the  inductive  spirit,  dogmatism  can  never  again 
reign.  When  I  spoke  of  ''  constructive  genius,"  I 
did  not  mean  constructive  of  dogmatic  systems. 
Their  day  has  passed. 

C.  Bless  God,  if  it  shall  prove  so !  I  think  I 
have  heard  you  say  that  there  is  an  advantage 
for  the  Old  Testament  in  the  new  view  of  it? 

B.  A  very  great  advantage.  Before,  its  uses 
were  fragmentary.  Certain  passages,  certain 
phrases,  and  here  and  there  a  portion  of  it,  were 
specially  comforting  or  helpful,  but,  as  a  whole, 
particularly  in  the  prophets,  it  was  a  sort  of  Urra 
incognita,  however  well  traversed  by  the  reader. 
Everything  in  it,  on  the  contrary,  now  leaps  into 
meaning.     The  life  within  it  speaks.     We  see  it 


2  24  Appe7idix  C 


growing,  advancing,  struggling  in  the  process,  but 
victorious.  Some  one  has  hkened  this  to  the 
difference  between  knowing  the  perorations  of 
Burke  or  Webster,  and  knowing  the  men  them- 
selves and  the  national  crises  through  which  they 
passed. 

C.  That  is  what  I  so  much  like  about  the  new 
idea  of  the  Bible.  God's  living  Spirit  and  men's 
spirits  are  brought  to  the  front.  There  is  a  voice 
now  as  truly  as  to  Moses  or  Isaiah.  For  this  the 
Bible  is  finger-board,  indicates  directions,  suggests, 
stirs  the  heart.  It  is  an  indispensable  auxiliary. 
Breathing  with  intense  life,  it  is  a  kind  of  Mar- 
seillaise Hymn  to  which  the  soul  marches.  But  it 
is  no  longer  put  forward  as  if  it  were  itself  life. 
It  does  not  bind  thought  and  truth  fast  forever. 
Individual  men,  the  human  race,  and  the  heav- 
enly life,  are  left  their  chance  to  expand  evermore. 
The  crustacean  stage  is  over. 

B.  You  catch  the  thought. 

C.  I  am  so  thankful  that  you  magnify  Christ.  I 
have  two  perplexities  there,  however.  One  of 
them  is  practical.  How  can  so  broad  a  Christian 
union  as  you  yearn  for  come  while  some  whom 
you  would  include  in  it  believe  Christ  to  be  far 
less  than  most  who  are  to  be  included  in  it  believe 
him  to  be? 

B.    Saint  John  had  that  difficulty.     It  was  he 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  225 

who  spoke  where  we  read :  *'  Master,  we  saw  one 
casting  out  devils  in  thy  name;  and  we  forbade 
him,  because  he  foUoweth  not  with  us.  But  Jesus 
said  unto  him,  Forbid  him  not :  for  he  that  is  not 
against  you  is  for  you."  Our  Lord  seems  also  to 
have  had  in  view  and  been  hospitable  toward  the 
two  types  of  mental  outlook  when  he  said,  ''  Be- 
lieve me  that  I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father 
in  me :  or  else  believe  me  for  the  very  works* 
sake."  There  exist  necessarily  these  two  types. 
Their  existence  should  be  a  perpetual  caution  to 
us  not  to  be  too  certain  that  we  have  compassed 
this  great  subject.  But,  in  any  case,  the  irrepres- 
sible yearning  of  Christendom  in  our  time  to  be 
one  is  a  voice  of  God,  if  ever  God  spoke  in  the 
soul  of  an  age. 

C.  So  it  seems  to  me,  though  there  are  complex- 
ities about  the  problem.  But,  again,  you  speak  of 
the  infinite  Christ  principle,  the  Lamb  slain  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world.  Is  this  concept 
enough  ? 

B,  No.  No  concept  is  enough.  There  are  as 
many  sides  of  Christ  as  there  are  of  this  round 
globe.  We  must  be  open  and  alert  for  all  of  them. 
But  this  concept  is  primary.  It  will  last  us  a  good 
while.  The  skipper's  boy,  you  remember,  having 
been  told  to  steer  the  sloop  by  a  certain  star,  woke 
him    up    after   a   little,   saying,  "  Father,   give   me 

15 


2  26  Appendix  C 


another  star,  I  've  got  past  that  one."     We  shall 
not  soon  get  past  this. 

C.  Indeed  we  shall  not.  Do  you  not  think,  to 
touch  on  another  subject,  that  there  is  a  practical 
peril  about  what  is  called  the  "  larger  hope  "? 

B.  Yes.  And  there  was  practical  peril  about 
the  old  eschatology.  It  was  the  wrecking  of  many 
a  man's  faith.  It  hardened  men.  The  "  larger 
hope"  has,  no  one  should  forget,  a  sense,  almost 
awful,  of  the  evil  of  sin  and  of  its  sure  punishment 
in  any  event.  With  this,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
couples  thoughts  of  God  worthier,  as  it  believes, 
than  those  of  the  other  view. 

C.  I  think  that  a  fair  way  to  put  it.  Only  one 
question  more.  Does  the  newer  thinking  make  as 
good  Christians? 

B.  How  good  Christians? 

C.  As  good  as  the  old  made. 

B.  How  good  did  the  old  make? 

C,  Well,  I  admit  that  it  did  not  always  make 
good  ones ;  it  made,  for  instance,  Judas,  and  Car- 
dinal Wolsey,  and  —  well,  me. 

B.  Have  you  not  known  Christians  holding 
obvious  errors  who  were  shining  Christians, 
nevertheless? 

C.  Yes. 

B.  And  Christians  holding  ideal  views  who,  not- 
withstanding, belied  the  name  of  Christ? 


Some  Plain  Questioning.  227 

C.   Yes. 

B.  While  we  recognize,  then,  that  a  transitional 
period  in  thought,  like  that  in  which  we  now  are, 
must  affect  temporarily  some  Christian  life  for  the 
better  and  some  for  the  worse,  shall  we  not  say, 
nevertheless,  that  it  is  not  the  thinking  that  makes 
the  Christian,  but  the  following  Christ  that  makes 
him? 

C.  That  is  it. 

B.  And  you  and  I  will  do  it? 

C.  God  helping  us,  we  will.     Good-by. 

B.  Good-by,  and  may  God  bless  the  little  mis- 
sion among  the  mountains ! 


In  how  jnany  and  what  uncertain  words  do  men  strive 
to  express  the  simplest  truth  when  that  truth  is  only  dawn- 
ing Oft  themselves  a  fid  ofi  others  /  //  is  like  the  shrilly 
disordered  jargonifig  of  birds  when  fjiorfiifig  first  finishes 
the  east.  Presefitly  the  whole  firmaffient  glows,  the  sufi  is 
7ip,  the  ftiists  flee  away,  jargon  is  dofie,  afid  day  reigns. 


LIST    OF    PRINCIPAL    NOTES. 

Page 

Concerning  these  Discourses 13,  i6i,  198 

Had  Christ  Mental  Advance  during  his  Ministry?    .     .  15 

Mr.  Bullard  and  Dr.  Bushnell I7 

Professor  Tucker's  "From  Liberty  to  Unity".     ...  27 

Dr.  Sheldon  (and  see  text) 3^ 

Channing,  Parker,  Emerson,  Carlyle 43 

"  Plain  Words  on  our  Lord's  Work  " 53 

Capital  and  Labor 9^ 

Restoring  the  Order  of  I sraelitish  History 150 

Professor  Thayer  and  Dr.  Gladden  on  the  Bible  .     .     .  152 

Dr.  Edgerly  (and  see  text) 166 

How  Camelot  looked  as  men  approached  it   ....  170 

Disfellowshipping  Drs.  Hale,  Peabody,  and  Others  .     .  178 

Death  the  Enhancing  of  Phillips  Brooks's  Influence    .  180 

Heresy  of  the  Antithesis  between  Nature  and  God  .     .  188 

"  Ye  cannot  bear  them  now  " 198 

The  Resurrection  Dialogue 212 

With  the  Saviour  it  was  all  vision 215 


/  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 
I  saw  no  temple  therein. 
His  servants  shall  serve  him. 
They  shall  see  his  face. 
His  name  shall  be  in  their  foreheads. 
There  shall  be  no  7iight  there. 
I  JoJui  saw  these  things^  and  heard  thejn. 
Love  is  of  God. 
Every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of  God,  and  knoweth  God. 

Saint  John. 


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